Who’s to blame in the aftermath of a tragedy? This week, we meet a family asking that question after their beloved son died when his college failed to intervene.

Resources:

To learn more about the people and organizations featured in this episode and access critical information about suicide and violence prevention visit: https://lastdayresources.simvoly.com/.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs is the host. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Andi Kristinsdottir is our audio engineer. Music is by Hannis Brown. Our story consultant is Kaya Henderson. Executive producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs. This season of Last Day is created in partnership with the Kendeda Fund, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss & Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund.

Follow Stephanie on Twitter and Instagram at @wittelstephanie. Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia. If you want to continue the conversation with other listeners, please join our Facebook group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/lastdaypodcast.

By the way, we have two whole other seasons! Go listen to them wherever you’re listening right now. You can also get premium content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple Podcasts.

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To follow along with a transcript, go to www.lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday shortly after the air date.

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Mike, Shelby, Sheriff Dunkerson, Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Tracy, Jen

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  00:00

This season we’re talking about guns, homicide and suicide. We’ve worked hard to ensure that our storytelling is as safe as possible. But we can address this issue by avoiding difficult details. Instead of warning who should and shouldn’t listen before each episode, we want to encourage you to press pause if and when you need to. And please note, this episode contains descriptions of suicide.

Tracy

This is the lovely individuals from Lemonada. They are going to be recording if anyone is uncomfortable with that, please just let me know. And we will make it soft.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Our team is setting up equipment in a science classroom at Belgrade High School, Go Panthers, tucked just outside of Bozeman, Montana. It’s early evening, and the room is filled with about a dozen students and parents.

Tracy 

But for the most part, this is just a presentation that I’ve done about 1000 times.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

That’s Tracy pacing back and forth at the front of the classroom. In the back. A lab table is stacked with piping hot pizzas, sodas and chips. In between Tracy encouraging stragglers to eat the food. Don’t be shy. She’s giving everyone the lowdown on why a podcast crew is crashing her presentation. Tracy is a coordinator for the Montana Chapter of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention or AFSP.

Tracy  01:21

So suicide is a health issue. I know a lot of people forget that. They think of suicide and they think mental health but health is health.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Everything Tracy is saying is accompanied by a slideshow projected on a big screen behind her. It’s all very polished. Tracy has her script down. Like she said she has done this 1000 times. And every slide includes stats and helpful information that has been specifically tailored for Montana communities.

Tracy

Access to lethal means basically means you have the ability to get a gun, you have an ability to take your life.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

It’s a heavy topic, but the kids and their parents are hanging on every word. And let me tell you, these words are carefully chosen. After the presentation, Tracy told us she’s figured out just the right balance of tragedy and levity.

Tracy  02:15

I try really hard to not be an emotional, but to not break down when I’m doing these presentations. I truly feel like it has to be, you know, there has to be some upbeat to it.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

I totally get this. I mean jokes obviously come very naturally to me. But I do intentionally try to weave them in on the show. Because otherwise it is a bummer to listen to a podcast about people dying. And I have to say Tracy’s approach was pretty effective in the room.

Tracy 

Everybody is different. And everybody’s mental health needs are different. It’s acceptable for you guys to all like a different type of pizza. And nobody came up and said no. Why are you taking the cheese pizza? That’s just stupid pizza, you need to take the pepperoni. Right? So mental health, same thing. The more I can engage them without tragedy, the more likely they are to listen to what I’m going to tell them. And then I can tell them that piece at the end. This is why I do this. This is the end of the presentation. And I will take any questions but I kind of do want to let you guys know why I’m here. Why I do this, why I talk about this. Why it’s so important to me.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

This is where the tragedy portion of the presentation comes in. I gotta tell you, I was kind of holding my breath the entire time, which was an hour wondering if she was going to tell her own story, which she did. She explained that she and her husband Mike raised three kids right here in Belgrade. In fact, they all went to this high school. They have two girls, twins. And their youngest, a son named Patrick, at six feet and 230 pounds. Patrick was a force on his high school football team. But he was just as comfortable in the kitchen as he was on the field. Every holiday season. He baked a family favorite, chocolate and pumpkin cheesecake. In 2015. Patrick was a freshman in college when Tracy realized they hadn’t heard from him in a bit. She started to get nervous. Why wasn’t Patrick answering his phone or responding to text messages? Something felt off.

Tracy  04:30

So I called the dorm manager and was told hey, yeah, he hasn’t been a student for the last five days. He checked out of the dorms on the 21st. Needless to say, he took his life on January 25th. And so not knowing that I was supposed to be having these conversations, not understanding how important as I talked about before, talking about drugs, alcohol and sex which is all the conversations that I had with my kids, not understanding that I should have added suicide to that.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Tracy’s doing what a lot of survivors do in the face of loss, using her experience to make sure others don’t suffer the same fate. She and her husband Mike still dwell on all the signs that were missed.

Mike 

You gotta be careful about pushing blame.

Tracy 

Because there’s a lot of it to go around. If you really want to do that. Patrick has blame. We have blame as his parents that I mean, there’s a lot of blame to go around. There’s a lot of guilt to go around.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

It is so natural to start throwing blame around in the aftermath of a tragedy and guilt. Oh my goodness, I could write an entire tome about guilt and the aftermath of loss. The people at the center of the story are devastated and desperately trying to make sense of it by pointing fingers at themselves and each other. So this week, we are talking about blame with the people who carry it. We look at what was missed, and more importantly, how that missed information could save lives. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs. This is LAST DAY.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  06:43

Tracy and Mike are both former military, they actually met in the Air Force while stationed in Key West Florida. After a brief stint living in Alaska, Tracy and Mike moved to Belgrade, Montana, not far from where Mike grew up. Tracy didn’t imagine putting down roots in freezing cold Montana. But after experiencing what Alaska had to offer, Montana felt temperate, and it quickly became home. Once they entered civilian life, Tracy became a paralegal and Mike joined the local police force. And they started a family first came their twin girls, Shelby and Jen, and then their youngest, Patrick.

Tracy 

He was the most low key as kind as he was to everybody. He was very introverted. He liked his time alone.

Mike 

He wasn’t very social, yeah, didn’t go to the dances.

Tracy

In fact, if you were to ask him, he’d say he was really not very popular. And yet, we would be out in public and people would walk up to him and be like, hey, Patrick, how you doing? And they talk to him and you know, what about this? And what about that, and they’d walk away and I’d be like, who’s that? And he’s like, oh, some kid in my class.

Shelby 

I think he was just a quiet kid. He just didn’t want to, like rock the boat. He didn’t want people to have to worry about him. He worried about him. And that was fine.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  08:08

That’s his sister Shelby. Both of his sisters live outside of Montana these days. But we caught up with them over zoom. Here’s Jen, Shelby’s twin.

Jen 

He was the person who went out of his way for you. And he didn’t care what status you had in the world. He was going to be kind to you. And he cared. He didn’t like fake care. He truly cared.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

At his memorial. People were shocked.

Tracy 

Patrick was the last person that they would have ever expected to do this. And just always really positive for everybody else. And I kind of said, I said you guys didn’t know that, Patrick. You knew the Patrick that was in high school, and that had his friends around him. And that had everything going for him. You didn’t know the Patrick that went to college, and then lost everything that, you know, thought that this was going to be such a great experience. And then got there and the classes were harder and the it was harder to make friends and there was nobody that went with him from his school to that college. And so yeah, you don’t know the Patrick that somewhere in October, started spiraled down.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Just like Zach and Austin, the transition out of high school was rough on Patrick. He wanted to study engineering and opted for the school that had the strongest engineering program rather than the school where he could get a spot on the football team. At the time, everyone felt like this was the smartest, best most mature decision. Unfortunately, things didn’t go how they thought they would, here’s Shelby again.

Shelby 

Around the time I think maybe he was hitting his low point was Halloween and so we had a conversation on Halloween. But Halloween is our favorite holiday. And so that’s really all we talked about, in hindsight, and you know, you’re like, fuck if I had just if I had just, of course. But he did let me know, he was like, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. And I was like, oh, yeah, that’s normal. It’s okay. But he didn’t really open up with how much he was struggling.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  10:25

Throughout his first semester, Patrick was keeping his struggles to himself and continuing to isolate. So it was hard for his family or friends to really know what was going on. And it turns out, things were even worse than they could have imagined.

Tracy 

He failed all his classes that first semester. And he was not participating, like in the dorm stuff. And that’s one of the reasons I talked to the kids at the high school so much, because it’s like, guys, I know that everybody’s telling you these transitions are so fantastic. And so amazing. But there’s a lot of fear that is completely justified. And I know that you know, as your parents are telling you, you’re going to struggle your freshman year, and you’re telling them no, I’m not. If you struggle, it’s okay to go back and say, yep, you’re right. Because it’s not the end of the world to struggle. The end of the world is giving up. And I felt like, we didn’t do a good enough job explaining that to Patrick. Because he truly felt like he couldn’t tell us what was going on.

Shelby 

My parents were military, and they believed that we could achieve more than we thought we could sometimes and they were right. But that feels pressuring sometimes. And I don’t necessarily think all of it because of my parents. I think they think that, I think they think that it’s their fault to a degree and that they pressured him too hard. And I think that there’s a part of that. But that’s part of being a parent and being like, I know you can do this, like, I know that you’re better than this. And I remember being on the receiving end of that. And it can feel like a lot.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  12:20

If Patrick was feeling this pressure, he kept it bottled up, even when he returned home for the holidays. And that’s where we pick up after the break. Patrick is a freshman in college, and he’s come home for the holidays.

Tracy 

So he’s here for Christmas. Everything seems normal. I mean, he seems normal Patrick, happy go lucky. And even his friend said, Patrick was normal. We were all complaining about how hard college is, and how all of a screwed up some here and there. But there was nothing that indicated to us that there was anything different.

Jen 

It’s hard because 2020 vision, like when you look back, so many things are different than how they felt in the moment.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

That December Jen was also home for the holidays.

Jen

In the moment, it was like oh, yeah, college sucks sometimes and then at the time, we found out that he had failed all of his classes. And I was like, dude, like, get it together. Like you can do this. Like, I know you can do this. We don’t really have those conversations, we mostly just hung out like we always did.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Jen was dealing with her own shit at the time navigating life after college, and she shared very candidly how she was feeling with Patrick.

Jen

He’s such a like, steady person, that it was like really easy to talk to him and be like, gosh, like life sucks right now. But it’s getting better. And he’s like, yeah, like, he’s just always there for you. He was a really good listener. And the sucky thing is like you don’t realize that you’re not listening to him.

Mike  14:08

We feeled him in his time of need, because we didn’t know. It’s not the college’s job to do that. So I’m not asking them to do any more. I’m just asking him to do what they said they would do.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

And what they said they would do is take care of their kid. They recall the Dean giving a big inspirational speech the weekend they dropped Patrick off. You’ve done a great job, Mom and Dad, your kid has made it to this fine institution. We’ll take it from here. Don’t worry. They’re in great hands. According to Tracy and Mike, all lip service.

Tracy 

For whatever reason, the college was incapable of making that connection that there was a problem, I get that the advisor thought he was failing classes because he was partying too hard. I also get that maybe the dorm manager thought that he was not socializing, because he was in an engineering program. And he was studying all the time, I get that. What I don’t get is why there wasn’t a communication, that there was a failure on both ends. Because as soon as you see that failure on both ends, that is the student you need to be hands on with.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

But it seems like he wasn’t like a big talker.

Mike 

No, not at all. Even to us. Because in why would if he felt like he was failing us, the last thing he’s going to talk about is his feelings So he made no effort whatsoever. And we even when we did push him, even at that point in time, he was still telling us that he had a roommate.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  16:01

In reality, his roommate had moved out months earlier, leaving Patrick even more isolated and alone. The Rasley’s weren’t aware of any of this though. Following Patrick’s death, they spoke with a store manager who filled in many of these gaps.

Mike 

Patrick, didn’t do, he didn’t need I never left his room. He didn’t do anything socially. He didn’t do anything that that we did in the dorms. He didn’t go to school. And I’m like, you just checked off the suicide list. What’s your problem? And that was the problem he had no clue.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

But Tracy, on the other hand, Mom instincts fully intact sense that something was off. So she emailed Patrick’s college counselor that fall, saying.

Tracy

I need you to check on my son. I just have this gut feeling. Could you please check in on him, and she’s like, yeah, yeah, sure. Just haven’t come to my office. No, as I said, Patrick’s telling me everything’s okay. I need you to go to him and check on him. You know, he’s telling me that his classes are tough. But he’s struggling through and he’s telling me that he’s socializing in the dorms, which we never believed he would be socializing in the dorms. So, but what he would send us was pictures of, like Halo night, and which, yes, he would totally do that. So he was lying to us in a believable way. And one of the things they kept saying was, well, yeah, he was failing his classes, but we send them an email. We sent him an email that he needed to participate more and get his grades up, we sent him an email.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Y’all, when you are struggling with any sort of acute mental health issue, an email ain’t gonna cut it.

Tracy

I mean, when we say that it was baffling, how poorly the college handled everything. We truly are not lying. There was not one thing about how or what they did that was handled appropriately.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  18:14

And the more Patrick pulled away, the harder Tracy leaned in.

Tracy 

And I’m type A, and I’m a little controlling. And so I just want your schedule. Oh, yeah, yeah. And so from the 11th, to like, the 19th. It was, oh, I have it. But I, you know, I just haven’t met, I have it in my phone, I don’t have it written down. And there was always an excuse.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Tracy texted and called for days on end, until she finally gave him an ultimatum.

Tracy

If you don’t call me by my lunch hour at work tomorrow, I’m going to call the door manager and I’m going to have them treat you like a little kid. And I’m going to have him take a phone to your room and force you to get on the phone with me. Because, you know, as soon as you send that usually I get either a call or a text back.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Nothing. So Tracy did exactly what she said she was going to do.

Tracy 

I called the dorm and said, hey, you know, I know I’m probably just being a mom, but could you please go to my kid’s room and make him give me a call? Because I’m getting nervous. And they were like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, took down his name. And they called me back five minutes later, and they said, Patrick hasn’t been registered for classes and hasn’t been in the dorms since..

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

And no class registration meant no dorm access.

Mike

And so the dorm manager kept telling him, hey, either register or I’m going to kick you out on Thursday. And on Thursday went, they went back to kick him out. So they go back and the keys on the desk and everything’s out of the room. And of course, we knew none of this, you know?

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  20:13

I felt their frustration and helplessness here so deeply. How can you help your person if you have no idea what’s going on? My brother checked out of his sober living facility on a Tuesday, we had no idea and he was dead by Thursday. It is so painful to think that things could have ended differently, if only you’d had more information.

Tracy 

So they call me and they’re like, well, he hasn’t been registered. And he hasn’t lived in the dorms since this time. And my, of course, immediate response is, well, where is he? And she was just like, well, I don’t know.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

So at this point, Tracy hasn’t heard from her son in days. And now he’s officially missing. She leaves work in a frenzy as her coworkers try to assure her, everything will be okay.

Tracy 

And there, both of them are like, it’s Patrick. You know, don’t worry about it, you know, it’s going to be okay. And I drove home. And I just had a feeling. And then I got home. And so then we started, you know, all the calls you make, all the nightmare calls that, you know, you hear about in these TV shows that you’re like, God, that would be awful. It’s pretty awful.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

When your entire world shifts suddenly, violently. It’s an out of body experience. It’s sort of feels like you’re hovering above, you know, seeing yourself go through the motions of an overly dramatized scene you’ve only seen played by actors and a movie. You have to keep reminding yourself that this is real. You are real. This is all really happening. And all the while your body is in full blown panic mode, heart pounding, tears swelling, palms sweating, mind racing. As Tracy was frantically searching for Patrick, a local resident over in Butte had noticed that a car had been parked for a few days in a public lot right off campus. Nothing particularly odd about the car. But this concerned citizen ended up reporting it to the police department anyway. And that’s when they found him.

Tracy  22:27

So the night of the 21st, night of the 22nd, the night of the 23rd, the night of the 24th. He was alone in that car. He didn’t spend any money. He sat in that car probably in the exact place where he was found for days waiting for somebody to find him or to work up the nerve to do what he did. How did you not give us those five days to find it.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Tracy used her work connections in the legal field to acquire internal emails sent between Patrick’s counselor. The person Tracy emailed in the fall when Patrick was first showing signs of struggling and her supervisors, the dean and the Chancellor of the school. According to Tracy, the counselor had forwarded their exchange with a pretty clear-cut admission of guilt.

Tracy 

The email to the dean and the Chancellor from her forwarding my email was it looks like this one fell through the cracks at the time.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Of course, none of this became clear until much later. During those chaotic hours trying to locate Patrick, Tracy and Mike are totally in the dark. Being a cop Mike went into full missing persons mode. He called the police department in Butte where Patrick’s college was located. And he and Tracy anxiously waited for answers. Eventually, two of Mike’s fellow officers from the Belgrade police department and his boss, the police chief all showed up for the Rasley’s front door.

Tracy  24:16

And I just thought well, the police over in Butte must have contacted them and they’re going to help.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

The officers in Butte had found Patrick and contacted the Belgrade Police Department. When the officers arrived at the Rasley’s door they handed Mike a phone, on the other line was the officer who found Patrick.

Mike

He just said like we found him, he’s in his car. And you know. Anyway, I said how, and he said with a gun. And I’m like a gun, where the hell did he get a gun? We have guns in this house. But still that where did he get a gun, he had, all the guns in this house are rifles.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

All the rifles were safely locked up. But there was one gun that was intentionally accessible at all times.

Mike

I’m like, well, I only have one pistol in this house.

Tracy 

That was mine.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Tracy’s pistol, safely tucked away in their bedroom. And that’s where we pick up after the break. We’re back. Mike and Tracy have just learned that their only son is gone. And the pieces are coming together for Mike hard and fast.

Mike

So I go upstairs and start looking for this pistol where it should be and I can’t find it. And you know, I’m on the phone with this Butte officer. And we’re both like and I find the case that that pistol had come in and it’s got the serial number on it. The case does. And I said can you can you see the gun? You see I have it in my hand. I said what is the serial number and […]

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  26:24

Patrick had taken Tracy’s pistol from their bedroom and used it to end his life.

Mike 

I think during Christmas he asked me where it was and…

Tracy 

And we had no reason to think that there was no reason to let him have it.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

the gun was locked in Tracy’s closet, but Patrick knew the code. So what was Patrick’s relationship like to firearms. I mean, he knew how to use them. Safe with them.

Tracy 

He’s been through hunter safety. He, they were always in the house that he always knew, you know. And in fact, some of his friends would come in and be like, Oh, your dad has a gun in the house. And Patrick would always be like, yeah, but we’re not going anywhere near it. I mean, all our kids knew that. You know, dad’s gun wasn’t, it wasn’t a toy, it was part of what he did for work.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

In Montana, every parent we talked to who lost a child to a firearm suicide, told us how extensive their education was around guns. And it’s true, Nick, and Austin, and Patrick all knew better. The problem is, deep despair, isn’t tethered to rational thought. If you find yourself in a moment of crisis, and remember that you have immediate access to lethal means. That is the danger zone. You can paint a similar picture with young kids who get their hands on an unsecured firearm.

Mike  28:23

Patrick was an adult. But yeah, I would say that we need to make sure that we are safer with our guns when it comes to kids, because we do see that here in the state of Montana. And I do believe that it’s reckless for a five-year-old to have the ability to access a gun.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

I don’t know if you’ve ever been in the presence of a child. But they do lots of things that don’t make sense. I mean, my son dove off the bed the other day and banged his head on a stone fireplace. Buckets of tears later I asked him why he chose to jump into a stone fireplace. And of course, he had no explanation. Because by nature, kids are not rational.

Mike 

My kids never had that access. They never did. I don’t have a lot of guns. So it was easy to lock them up. But so I think that is true, but there should be some sort of responsibility back on the parents. We had a situation right after Patrick died, where a 12-year-old shot a nine-year-old in the head, I do believe that kid didn’t think beyond the pulling of the trigger. And so now we do fall into that kids are disconnected to the reality of what happens I think he pulled the trigger thinking rule and let’s see what happens. And then when you know the bolt came out and killed that kid the oh and that’s a problem they that I would never have done that as a child but kids now desensitize we all know that. So those parents I think, should have taken a responsibility in preventing their 12-year-old from getting that gun. And then then how horrible was it for me to go tell the parents of that nine-year-old that their child had just been killed. Yeah, there’s an issue there.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  30:22

When Mike said there needs to be some accountability placed on parents, my mind went straight to the Friday before sitting in an airport terminal in California waiting for my plane to Montana. My mom sent me a text, it said, not sure if you heard but the parents of the kid that killed his classmates were arrested for involuntary manslaughter. Your podcast is timely. Let me give you some context. We’ve mostly avoided talking about mass shootings this season for all the reasons we listed back in episode one. And while there seems to be a new one every single week, we happen to be flying to Montana to report on gun violence. Just days after the Oxford high school shooting outside of Detroit, Michigan. The story was horrific, and disturbing and heartbreaking and way too familiar. Except for one thing, something kind of unheard of. In these cases, the shooters parents are also facing criminal charges. So when Mike brought up holding parents accountable, I wanted to know his opinion about what was going on in Michigan. Do you think that’s the right thing to have done? He should have happened? Yes.

Mike 

And you know that I came that far. You know what I mean? What a fabric would have done this at the age of 17? Well, then that’s my responsibility. And could he have? Yes, he absolutely had access to that gun at the age of 17 that he did at the age of 19. But that’s my responsibility, and I failed.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs  32:13

Mike may feel like he failed. But his intentions are always in the right place. He wanted to protect his family. And he’s certainly not alone. Gun owners across the country are doing everything they can to keep their family safe. And sometimes that includes keeping a firearm loaded and accessible in the event of an emergency. As a police officer, Mike is pretty vigilant about safety. But his worldview can actually be traced back to childhood.

Mike 

Even back when I was a kid, I lived out of town. So you’d think we’d never locked the door, we’d locked everything up because people would go to these farms knowing nobody was around and steal gasoline or whatever. So I have locked everything up my whole life, even though I came from this Podunk little place. And even now I get people coming from big cities. And when they get broken into because they didn’t lock anything up. They’re like, well, it’s an it’s a safe community. And I’m like, well, actually, that’s just the opposite. Because we’re a smaller community, therefore we have fewer police officers. So the criminals are freer to do what they want.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

So you guys do see a lot of like break ins and stuff around here.

Mike 

No, not a lot. Every year we seem to get a group of kids or sometimes adults that go through and just walk down the street and open car doors. Yeah, they call it car hopping. Yeah. And we just went through two crashes of those, and it’s 100 cars in a night, and they’re all unlocked.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Listen, I don’t want to totally dismiss how much it sucks to have your car broken into. It’s happened to me a few times. And it’s not fun, rip to my perfectly curated CD collection from the 90s. But it is also not exactly the kind of life-threatening situation that would warrant a gun for self-defense. I mean, if this is the most serious crime that Mike thought to mention, that seems pretty good, right? And he wasn’t the only member of law enforcement who told us how safe Montana actually is. What we’ve heard a lot from people is that they need the guns for self-defense. But here’s my question about that. As an outsider, it seems like such a safe community. It is so who are we trying to defend again?

Sheriff Dunkerson  34:33

All you have a very good point. It is a very relatively safe community.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

That is Sheriff Scott Dunkerson, who you met back in episode two was Shannon and Larry Martell. As we chatted with him at the police station. Earlier in the week, we started to explore this theme of self-defense in Montana, this laser focus to protect yourself and your family at all costs. But as we drove through quaint little towns where everyone knows everyone and miles and miles of open sky and wilderness. We began to wonder what exactly are people protecting themselves from?

Sheriff Dunkerson 

I don’t know what it is I, maybe that’s part of the culture too is you know, this is my castle. I’m gonna defend it to the end. I don’t know how to describe all that to you.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

That’s the part that I’m I get really hung up on because I’m like this place seems so wholesome.

Sheriff Dunkerson 

I’ve had that discussion with multiple people that move in here thinking they’re still living in Brooklyn or New Jersey.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

It seems like it’s more of a mentality than a reality.

Sheriff Dunkerson 

I think you’re right.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

Fear mentality is very strong, but I also have to admit that in Montana, things are extremely far apart. As a city girl, I’d never experienced anything quite like it. I mean, Sheriff Dunkerson’s police station is a 45-minute drive to Shannon and Larry’s house and Drummond. I know this because we drove the route and couldn’t get over how far it was in the event of a true emergency. So there is some real logic behind the idea of being able to take matters into your own hands if someone were to kick in your front door. So I asked the sheriff if home invasions and break ins happen a lot around here.

Sheriff Dunkerson  36:26

No, they don’t. Our response is going to be significant. Like if we had one of those down in Rockword right now. It takes me 45 minutes to get there. Everybody here knows when you call 911 It’s going to take some time. I’m real honest with people about that. You know, don’t just run around shooting people for you know, but you do have a right to defend yourself. And that’s a given.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Just trying to figure out.

Sheriff Dunkerson  36:55

You got a good point. There’s not a lot of a go on. My house is totally unlocked. I can tell you.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

I mean, how dangerous can it be if the literal Sheriff leaves his own house unlocked. According to the gun violence, archive home invasions in Montana, are pretty rare. And they’re defining home invasions as a forcible entry with firearms with the intent to terrorize, steal, or harm the occupants of the home. I cannot deny that even reading those words fills me with extreme dread. It is terrifying to think that this could happen to you or your family. But let’s look at the numbers. In 2018. Across the entire United States of America, there were a little under 2000 verified cases of home invasions. Now, four of those four happened in Montana. For comparison cases in the state of New York, totaled 68. That year, and Illinois had 77. And of course, all of these figures are minuscule compared to the numbers of suicides and homicides involving a firearm each year. Okay, so home invasions are rare, but they do happen. And this brings us back to a question we’ve asked a lot throughout this series is a gun, the safest way to protect yourself. We didn’t get a chance to discuss a home breaking scenario with Mike. But we did ask about an active shooter situation, which is usually the first example people cite in the good guy with a gun argument.

Mike  38:29

Had somebody at one of these shootings had a gun, they could potentially have stopped it. What little training I’ve had in that, and I would think that most law enforcement officers would agree with me, if you’ve never had the training, I have had that training. And I’m terrified to go into that situation, to the point where I know that I will be shocked doing my job that just it’s impossibility to stop somebody in an active shooter situation without getting shot unless you’re incredibly lucky. So now you take a citizen with zero training. Do you think they’re going to be able to do that? No, not at all.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs

So here you have it. Mike, a veteran police officer poking holes in the good guy with a gun argument. So I was kind of curious to see what he thinks the solution might be. As a law enforcement officer and a parent whose kid got access to a gun in the home like what is the, what do you think is important to focus on here?

Mike 

Yes, I am from Montana. I have hunted my life and I am a police officer. I believe in guns that people should have the choice on whether to have them or not.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

You can hear Mike grappling with everything in the moment. He believes in guns, but he’s also seen the damage they can do. The truth is, the Rasley’s embody responsible gun ownership. They locked up all their firearms, they taught their kids how to handle them safely. But none of that made a difference in the end.

Mike

This gun was locked up, it was locked up, but Patrick knew the combination. So and he would always have known that combination.

Tracy 

Unless we knew that there was a concern. Well, yeah, and that’s, that’s the he, I mean, again, I think that’s the piece that people miss is gun safety is incredibly important. But you have to have the mental health piece along with it, because it means nothing without that.

Stephanie Wittels Wachs 

Trace Tracy is absolutely right. We can talk about gun safety all day long; we can shift people’s behavior with their firearms. But if the stigma and shame around mental health in the Mountain West hold steady, if access to mental health resources remains scarce, great strides will be very difficult to make. You’ve got to have both to make any real impact. Until that happens, people like Patrick young people will continue to fall through the cracks. So next week, we had to a small town in the midst of a suicide cluster, are no one wants to talk about mental health, and they certainly don’t want to talk about guns.

CREDITS

LAST DAY is a production of Lemonada Media. Jackie Danziger is our supervising producer. Our producers are Kegan Zema and Giulia Hjort. Hannah Boomershine and Erianna Jiles are our associate producers. Music is by Hannis Brown. Executive Producers are Jessica Cordova Kramer and me Stephanie Wittels Wachs. We are thrilled to partner this season with the Candida Foundation, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Pritzker Pucker Family Foundation, Levi Strauss and Co, and Everytown for Gun Safety. You can find more mental health and legal arms restrictions resources along with info about some of the voices on the show in the show notes and at lemonadamedia.com/show/lastday. If you want to hear more LAST DAY, we have two whole other seasons. Please go listen to them wherever you’re listening right now. And while you’re there, I implore you to take a moment to rate review and subscribe. It is the number one way that you can help the show. Join our Facebook group to connect with me and fellow LAST DAY listeners at www.facebook.com/groups/lastdaypodcast. You can find us on all social platforms at @LemonadaMedia. And you can find me at @wittelstephanie. You can also get bonus content and behind the scenes material by subscribing to Lemonada Premium on Apple podcasts. I’m Stephanie Wittels Wachs. See you next week.