After Montana bar shooting, a search stretches on and a cautious town mourns

Flowers are left outside the Owl Bar cordoned off with yellow police tape in Anaconda, Mont., on Saturday, Aug. 2, 2025. The authorities in Montana were still searching on Saturday afternoon for an Army veteran they say opened fire inside a neighborhood bar a day earlier, killing four in what an official described as a senseless act of violence. (Janie Osborne/The New York Times)

By Jake Ellison, Jim Robisn, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Patricia Mazzei

Residents of a rural town in Montana tried to return to regular life Saturday, with some trepidation, as the search for a gunman who opened fire inside a neighborhood bar, killing four people, continued with little new information.

Authorities said that the suspect, a 45-year-old Army veteran named Michael P. Brown, fled into the brushy foothills after the attack at the Owl Bar in Anaconda on Friday morning. They urged residents and business owners to go about their business over the weekend, with caution. Stores reopened, though the streets of Anaconda, a former copper smelting town near Butte, were somewhat quiet.

“Last night was the first night I locked my doors in probably 20 years,” said Mark McDonald, 69, who was born and raised in Anaconda and was bartending at Thompson’s Bar downtown Saturday. “I will lock my doors tonight,” he added, though he said he was confident that authorities would find the suspect soon.

A bartender at the Owl Bar and three patrons were killed in the attack, officials said Saturday, without naming the victims. The tavern is a local dive where regulars play pool and drink beer. On Saturday, it was cordoned off with yellow police tape. Someone had placed two small bouquets of flowers against a lamppost outside.

“I feel kind of numb,” said Doug Kerr, who was out with his dog, Ellie. He recently moved to the area from Dallas after having fallen in love with the small-town atmosphere of Anaconda, in Deer Lodge County. “You can walk around and everybody knows the name of your dog.”

The search — on foot, in vehicles and by helicopter — centered on an area west of town, near Stumptown Road, where authorities found an abandoned white pickup truck Friday. It was unclear how the suspect fled; officials said Saturday that a truck they towed had not been involved in the shooting. The dense terrain made searching difficult.

The killings occurred about 10:30 a.m. local time Friday. Witnesses said they heard gunshots in the bar. Brown was well known around Anaconda, and social media posts show he had been to the establishment before. Records show that Brown lived two houses down from the Owl.

On Saturday, the Division of Criminal Investigation at the Montana Department of Justice provided a photograph taken from security camera footage on the day of the attack. It showed a gaunt man, shirtless and in dark shorts, walking barefoot down a set of stairs, apparently leaving the bar.

“We’re doing everything we can to find and bring this perpetrator to justice,” Chief Bill Sather of the Anaconda Deer Lodge County Police said in a brief video posted to social media Saturday afternoon.

Relatives of Brown described him as shy, loving and long dealing with mental illness, including diagnosed schizophrenia, that worsened after his mother died in 2021. A sister who spoke on the condition that her name not be used said that he was so paranoid that he refused to own a cellphone.

Brown joined the Army in January 2001 and served in Iraq between 2004 and 2005 before leaving the service in May 2005 as a sergeant, an Army spokesperson said. He was in the Montana National Guard for about two years until March 2008.

Two relatives of Brown said he had returned from the Army with physical ailments and severe post-traumatic stress disorder that gave him night terrors. They also said he was later diagnosed with bipolar disorder in addition to schizophrenia.

The sister said that she and other family members had tried to get help for Brown from the Department of Veterans Affairs but that little could be done without his cooperation.

One of Brown’s other siblings, William, was convicted of homicide in 2001, according to public records and to the sister. The two brothers have not talked in years, she said, in part because Michael Brown did not have a cellphone. William Brown, who was sentenced to more than 100 years, remains in prison, according to a Montana Department of Corrections database.

McDonald used to work at the Owl and remembered the suspect coming in every Saturday to order a beer or a soda. If Brown fled to the foothills, McDonald added, he did not expect to ever see him in town again.