Shooting kills three, spurs suspect hunt

BILLINGS – A shooting left three people dead at a rural residence on Montana’s Crow Reservation and a manhunt was under way Tuesday for an armed suspect, prompting a lockdown of schools, a hospital and other public buildings, authorities said.

Authorities were searching for 22-year-old Sheldon Bernard Chase, who is considered armed and extremely dangerous, FBI spokeswoman Deborah Bertram said.

The killings took place in a remote area of the southeast Montana reservation roughly 10 miles from the Wyoming border, local officials said. The victims’ identities weren’t released and it wasn’t immediately clear when they were killed.

Lodge Grass City Clerk Cody Not Afraid said those killed were an elderly woman, her granddaughter and the granddaughter’s boyfriend.

The two younger victims were in their 20s, said Not Afraid, who knew the victims’ families. She said they lived along Lodge Grass Creek Road about 10 miles outside of Lodge Grass, a city of about 500 people.

Not Afraid said she did not know what led to the shootings.

Bertram said anyone who sees Chase should not approach him but instead call law enforcement.

Public buildings across the reservation were locked down at about 1:30 or 2 p.m. while the search for the suspect took place, tribal representative Donald Spotted Tail said. People were told to stay inside, including about 160 students at Lodge Grass High School.

“They just told us code yellow, which means get in your class, turn the lights off and put stuff on the windows so nobody can see inside,” said Tanya Little Light, a secretary at the school. “It was probably about 1:50 or so. They just told us there was some kind of accident or something.”

Little Light said security guards were at the school, but that there were no police officers outside or indications that the manhunt was taking place nearby.

School was supposed to be out for the afternoon when she spoke, and some parents were coming to get their children, Little Light said. The parents had to come to the front door before the children would be released, she said.

Big Horn County Commissioner John Pretty on Top said the killings occurred at a home and that a family member was a suspect in the killings. That couldn’t be immediately confirmed by law enforcement sources.

“A young man went and killed some people up near Lodge Grass,” Pretty on Top said. “They’ve got rangers up there, moving about quite a bit.”