Incident Leaves Lingering Questions

West End Volunteer Fire Chief Bruce Charles sent a letter Friday to Steve Bullock, the Attorney General of Montana, with a request that he look into the investigation of an incident that occurred at a crash site on May 20 involving Trooper Richard Hader of the Montana Highway Patrol. 

Chief Charles was conducting traffic control at the scene of an accident involving a semi-truck when he saw a highway patrol vehicle approach at an estimated 40 to 50 mph. 

Traffic control, according to Chief Charles, can be a very dangerous job and one of the West End’s volunteer firefighters was killed three years ago conducting traffic control.  

“We had a fire truck off to the side of the road partially blocking the driving lane – the purpose being to make sure that traffic would be funneled to the left so they could go safely around where the medics were working.” Chief Charles said. “This highway patrol car continued at this high rate of speed and came at us between the slowed traffic and the fire truck.”

The highway patrol vehicle was driven by Trooper Hader and Chief Charles added that prior to his arrival, the scene was completely under control and medics were able to safely attend to the injured driver. 

“I had no place to go. I was trying to get him to slow down and he just totally refused. My thoughts were ‘what a bloody idiot’,” Chief Charles said. “How did he know that I didn’t have a medic coming around the corner of the fire truck or that there was something ahead that he should slow down for because he was going to hit it. In addition, if one of those other vehicles had seen his lights coming and done the normal thing, which is to pull to the right – hell I might be dead.”

Trooper Hader would not comment on Chief Charles’ request for a follow up investigation from the Attorney General’s office. 

“All I will say is that there is a video of the event and it does not match his story,” Trooper Hader said. 

Following this incident, Chief Charles spoke with Highway Patrol Sergeant Roman Zylawy and was asked to provide a formal written statement regarding the incident, which he sent to Sgt. Zylawy as well as Colonel Michael Tooley, who is head of MHP. 

 “The first thing they told me was that there was a problem with the video tape in the officer’s car and they couldn’t download it,” Chief Charles said. “That possibly was correct but I didn’t really think that that made a lot of sense. Basically after that I heard very little.”

Chief Charles added that he believes the proper course of action by Mineral County Officials would have been to request that state authorities in Helena send out someone not connected with the incident to investigate the matter.

Captain Greg Watson of the Missoula Highway Patrol District said that the investigation of the incident was throrough and that the video from Trooper Hader’s patrol vehicle contradicts Chief Charles’ statement.

“We don’t normally comment too much on internal investigations,” Capt. Watson said. “Our agency will not go tit-for-tat in a newspaper like this.” 

Sergeant Russ Fried, a police officer in Ohio and land owner in De Borgia, was also at the scene of the accident helping Chief Charles with traffic control. Chief Charles mentions him in the incident report, however Sgt. Fried said that he has not been contacted by anyone in regards to the incident. 

“I’ve been a police officer for 27 and a half years and I would believe if anybody was making a complaint about an officer’s actions that the appropriate protocol is to look into it,” Sgt. Fried said. “Normally you would contact all individuals who had been there or have some information that would be useful in regards to that complaint. Either somebody doesn’t care or they’re not interested.”

For Chief Charles, that is one of the main reasons he sent the letter to the Attorney General. 

“You have a serving police officer with a number of years of service, he observed what went on,” Chief Charles said. “He would have been a perfect third party reference but was never contacted.” 

Chief Charles said that hewould like a complete investigation by the office of the Attorney General and that this incident has also produced concerns for the future of the West End Volunteer Fire Department. 

“We’re at the point of trying to determine whether or not we will respond to anything on the highway whatsoever,” Chief Chalres said. “We cannot take our people out there and have them subjected to this type of thing. We are all volunteers, we don’t have to do this, To get stabbed in the back by people who are supposed to be helping us is absurd. Absolutely absurd.” 

Chief Charles added that the situation is very serious and it seemed as though officials were trying to “shoved under the carpet”.