Elizabeth Doney Havre Daily News edoney@havredailynews.com
A call was received at 12:38 p.m. on Friday with a woman reporting that she had been hit by her suicidal boyfriend who had taken off with a gun, last seen headed toward the middle school on the 1000 block of Wilson. Officers responded immediately, Havre Police Chief Mike Barthel said, by notifying school officials and proceeding to set up near the bus garage on 11th Street. Approaching the residence on Wilson Avenue, officers located a set of tracks they followed to an alley west of Wilson Avenue, Barthel said. The tracks led south crossing 11th Street West, down the 1100 block alley, then turned east on 12th Street West to a 1100 Lincoln Avenue residence on the north side of the street, reported to be an ex-girlfriend’s home. School administrators provided Highland Park Early Primary School and Havre Middle School staff with instructions to place the buildings on indefinite lockdown. Officers located the suspect underneath the side porch of the residence, clothed in jeans and a light hooded sweatshirt. Barthel said several officers established verbal dialogue with the suspect, identified as Sheldon Wilson of Havre. Immediate family and friends were summoned to the scene, Barthel said, and joined the officers as they repeatedly asked the suspect to discard the weapon. An ambulance was called to the scene as the officers offered Wilson blankets and coffee, which he refused. Appearing to be developing hypothermia, the suspect did not comply with requests to discard his weapon, instead he began saying that he was going to end his life, Barthel said. As his speech became slower and slower, then lagging to long periods of silence, Barthel said, the suspect fired a single shot to his head with a .22 caliber semiautomatic hand gun at 3:58 p.m. The sound of the shot was very quiet according to one witness at the scene. A white sheet covered the stretcher carrying Wilson to the ambulance. When the suspect was surrounded by officers, Highland Park students were safely evacuated on the east side of the school at 2:35 p.m. The autopsy revealed Wilson died of a contact gun shot wound with no other trauma noted on the body, Barthel said. A toxicology report is still pending and ownership of the weapon has yet to be established. One of the officers in communication with the suspect was a counselor and the chief reported that the police department had ongoing training for a number of years specifically dealing with suicides. “As tragic as it was, I am thankful that no officers or community members were injured,” said Barthel, who was at the scene throughout the incident. “A debriefing was held with the officers involved and they appeared to be OK.”
