A recording of a pastor’s encounter with a heavily armed shooter in front of his small-town church became evidence in a trial that resulted in a hate crime conviction.
John Russell Howald, 46, was found guilty in connection with a shooting spree on March 22, 2020, in Basin, Montana, a community of about 250 people between Butte and Helena, the U.S. Justice Department said last week.
On a self-described mission to kill lesbian and gay residents, Howald shot several times into a woman’s home around noon on that Sunday. He was reportedly walking to another residence, carrying three rifles and two pistols, when he encountered congregants outside a church on Basin’s main street, the prosecutors’ account said.
The church’s pastor, Floyd Oliver, was among the people who tried to talk Howald down, and about 10 minutes of their conversation was caught on the device with which the pastor recorded his sermon. He said he didn’t realize until later that the recorder was still running.
“The recording captured Howald making statements that he might have killed a lesbian and that he hoped he had, and that he was going to get rid of lesbians and gays in Basin,” the federal prosecutors’ news release said. “The recording also captured Howald firing off several more rounds.”
On the recording, the man tells Oliver that he wants to rid the town of “its sickness,” and adds, “I just started a revolution.”
Howald fled when sheriff’s deputies arrived, and he was arrested the next day.
The woman whose home he shot into was in the shower at the time, and she was not injured by the bullets that went through the wall.
At his sentencing, scheduled for June 15, Howald faces a maximum of life imprisonment, a $250,000 fine and five years of supervised release on the hate crime conviction and a mandatory minimum 10 years to life imprisonment, consecutive to any other sentence, a $250,00 fine and five years of supervised release on a firearm conviction.
Howald previously served a prison term for animal cruelty after he shot a couple’s Labrador retriever in 2005 at a public campground and decapitated it with a chain saw.
Hits: 0
