Exposing a child to fentanyl

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) – The Missoula County District Attorney's Office filed 17 new criminal charges this week, the same as last week and about the same as the weekly average. Eight of those were violent crimes against persons, according to District Attorney Matt Jennings.

“The bright spot this week is that we only had one incident of domestic violence,” Jennings said. “Often, domestic violence accounts for about half of all violent crimes in our area, and it's increasing somewhat. I've been thinking about that a lot. I actually hope it's increasing, not because there's more domestic violence, but because maybe it's easier for victims to report it, to come forward, to tell other people about an abusive relationship.”

In addition, Jennings stated that there were two endangerment crimes, one of which involved a child coming into contact with fentanyl.

“We're seeing more and more cases where kids are around drugs,” Jennings said. “We're actually testing hair samples to see if they actually came into contact with it. Unfortunately, that's the case with a lot of kids in our community, and we take these cases very seriously. We try to follow them to the finish line, but they're surprisingly difficult to prosecute because often there are a lot of people living in the house or the kids are being cared for by multiple people and everyone says they don't know how they came into contact with it.”

Jennings said those aren't usually the most truthful statements, but his office is doing what it can to make sure these people are held accountable. He said they have the tools to make sure these children can be separated from their parents if they are continually exposed to dangerous or unsafe situations.

“We had two property crimes, three drug crimes and two misdemeanors,” Jennings said. “Those were warrants for evading arrest, and that sounds really bad, but really it just means there's a warrant out for someone from out of state. Sometimes it's for serious crimes and sometimes it's for auto theft, which is still serious but not necessarily a danger to the community.”

READ MORE: Missoula News – Crime Reports

Jennings also mentioned some upcoming litigation that is keeping his office busy.

“On September 9th, we have the case of Cole Levine, which was an attempted rape case that occurred in the summer of 2022,” Jennings said. “It was honestly every woman's worst nightmare to be sexually assaulted in downtown Missoula. We have put a lot of resources into this matter. We are excited to get justice for this victim and get this case to trial in a few weeks.”

The Missoula County District Attorney's Office releases a weekly crime report on Talk Back every Friday morning at 9:00 a.m. You can listen to Jennings' full report below: