Montana
Sheehy said gunshot records don't exist, as conservative talk show host calls incident 'confusing' • Daily Montanan
A national conservative talk show host gave Montana Senate candidate Tim Sheehy a chance to address a gunshot wound records suggest happened in Glacier National Park, but the Republican businessman-turned-politician said happened because of friendly fire overseas during his Navy SEAL career.
Sheehy’s appearance left the host commenting, “so confusing.”
On Friday, Sheehy appeared on the Megyn Kelly Show with Kelly asking about the gunshot incident, which has drawn both state and national media attention as one of the defining issues that could also determine which political party controls the U.S. Senate. Sheehy is running against three-term incumbent U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat from Big Sandy.
Sheehy has insisted that a bullet in his arm is the result of “friendly fire” overseas, and that he didn’t report the incident to commanders for fears of getting in trouble or having to leave combat.
However, a ticket and interview from former Glacier Park ranger Kim Peach in 2015 detailed that Sheehy was instead cited for discharging a firearm in the park, and was treated at an area hospital for the wound. Sheehy himself wrote a handwritten statement at the time admitting the improperly stored firearm fell and discharged into his arm. Sheehy later paid the fine and the gun, a .45-caliber revolver, was returned to him.
On Saturday, Sheehy was asked repeatedly about the wound, and Kelly told him the interview was an opportunity to clarify what happened as the issue has been repeatedly at the center of the campaign. The Democrats have used it to make their case he’s lying and not to be trusted.
Sheehy said on the program that the friendly fire likely happened because of foreign forces that the U.S. military was helping in Afghanistan, without giving details about when and where the incident happened.
“You’d have Afghans who, either intentionally or unintentionally, would end up shooting friendly forces. You know, sometimes they just start putting their weapons on full auto and start, you know, shooting whatever direction they felt like,” Sheehy said.
In his memoir, Sheehy said he was hit by friendly fire from “a total stud who went on to a successful career as a SEAL.”
In the interview with Kelly, he said that he didn’t report the incident to commanders because it could break up their team with investigations, and also risked him being sent back for medical treatments, something, Sheehy told Kelly, he didn’t want to have happen.
“You know, we were at about half strength this point in our deployment. We’d have many teammates wounded and sent home,” Sheehy said. “And you know me, as a team commander, there was no position to be to be carved off the battlefield. Many of us were injured multiple times. We don’t report that simply because we’re going to stay in the fight, stay with our team. We’re going to finish our deployment and do our job. So unless those injuries are life threatening, of course, you know, if you’ve lost a limb, like some of our teammates had, or there’s a severe injury, you’re going to you’re going to deal with that, because that person has to be cared for, but otherwise you just keep on moving.”
Kelly tried redirecting the conversation several times to the incident itself, but Sheehy sidestepped the question, for example, in this exchange:
“Just to be clear: Did you shoot yourself in the arm?” she asked.
“No, that was never the allegation that. But the point is, you know, it was a friendly fire ricochet downrange that wasn’t reported at the time and after,” Sheehy said.
“I don’t want to harp on this. I just want to give you the chance. I want to give you the chance to explain yourself, because this is their closing message. It’s all about this incident, but voters are confused,” Kelly said.
Instead, Sheehy said that when he was hiking in Glacier, he felt the bullet became dislodged and went to the hospital.
“The point was, at the time, I was injured (in Glacier) and went to the hospital, they required a police report, because any gunshot room requires a police report of any kind. And they said, ‘We have to file this. We have to report this to law enforcement,’” Sheehy said. “And still having active team members, you know, in the service who were involved in at that time, I simply said, ‘Well, this is, this is an old one.’ They said, ‘No, we have to report this as a gunshot wound, you know, to the law enforcement.’ So, yeah, I said, ‘Well, okay, fine. It was an accident.’”
A Montana medical examiner with expertise in gunshot sounds recently said evidence shows it’s possible Sheehy hurt his elbow in a firefight on the battlefield and that he also hurt himself in Glacier Park.
Kelly asked about any medical records that could help clarify or corroborate the incident, but Sheehy said they don’t exist.
“You go in, you check on it, and then you leave. There’s not an extensive medical record for any of this stuff. And unfortunately, that’s the crux of this. Is there’s just not a whole lot to talk about. They decided to take this one report from a park ranger that I gave them,” Sheehy responded.
Sheehy also insisted that he and the campaign have been transparent with voters, satisfying their questions, only to have the Democrats continue to bring it up.
“No, we’ve discussed this at length, repeatedly with every media outlet for the last year. It’s been beat to death,” Sheehy said.
However, both national and state media have reported that Sheehy has ducked interviews and not responded to questions surrounding the bullet incident in Glacier National Park.
On two previous occasions, the Daily Montanan has put in requests to the Sheehy campaign for medical records regarding that incident. The Sheehy campaign did not respond to either of those requests.
The Daily Montanan renewed the requests on Sunday morning.
The Montana Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.
Here’s a look at May 8, 2026, results for each game:
Winning Mega Millions numbers from May 8 drawing
37-47-49-51-58, Mega Ball: 16
Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Big Sky Bonus numbers from May 8 drawing
09-14-18-20, Bonus: 16
Check Big Sky Bonus payouts and previous drawings here.
Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from May 8 drawing
14-16-21-43-51, Bonus: 03
Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.
Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results
When are the Montana Lottery drawings held?
- Powerball: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Mega Millions: 9 p.m. MT on Tuesday and Friday.
- Lucky For Life: 8:38 p.m. MT daily.
- Lotto America: 9 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday.
- Big Sky Bonus: 7:30 p.m. MT daily.
- Powerball Double Play: 8:59 p.m. MT on Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
- Montana Cash: 8 p.m. MT on Wednesday and Saturday.
- Millionaire for Life: 9:15 p.m. MT daily.
Missed a draw? Peek at the past week’s winning numbers.
This results page was generated automatically using information from TinBu and a template written and reviewed by a Great Falls Tribune editor. You can send feedback using this form.
Mobile home residents in Bozeman, Montana, say they’re being forced to choose between paying rent and paying medical costs.Courtesy of Jered McCafferty
35-year-old Benjamin Moore has lived in Mountain Meadows Mobile Home Park, outside Bozeman, Montana, since he was 17. This month, for the first time, he’s withholding his rent.
On May 1, Moore received a rent bill for $947, up 11 percent from the month before, and the second hike in nine months—the product of the park’s sale to an undisclosed buyer.
Moore hung a sign on his trailer that says “RENT STRIKE.” He and his neighbors in Mountain Meadows and nearby King Arthur Park, organized with the citywide group Bozeman Tenants United, are collectively withholding over $50,000 a month from their landlord.
Historically, trailer parks have been a relatively affordable housing option—a third of trailer park residents in America live below the poverty line. But on average, their cost of living has risen 45 percent over the past decade. By unionizing, the Bozeman trailer park tenants believe they might be able to fight the most recent rent hike—especially given the state of their housing.
For years, tenants say, the maintenance hasn’t been attended to: tree limbs hang perilously over trailers, and water shutoffs are a regular occurrence. “I cannot recall a time in the past 20 years where we had three straight months of water and power working all day, every day,” Moore said.
Shauna Thompson, another resident, calls the water “atrocious…like a Milky Way, like you’re drinking skim milk. It’s very nasty and turned off all the time, without any notice.” And tenants allege that they’ve experienced retribution for maintenance requests, punitive eviction attempts, and unsafe conditions.
“It’s really hard on people here,” Moore said. Some residents are “already paying their entire Social Security check for rent. It’s a very poor neighborhood. We’ve got old folks. We’ve got young families. We’ve got working-class people who can’t afford anything else.”
For the past four decades, a group called Oakland Properties has owned both trailer parks. When they learned about the sale, tenants were scared that their parks would be bulldozed, or that their rent would be increased even further, forcing them to move.
The tenants attempted to buy the parks themselves, but were decisively outbid. The winning bidder demanded an NDA. The transaction should be finalized next month, park owner Gary Oakland said, but residents still don’t know who’s going to own the land they live on.
This month’s rent hike, Oakland acknowledged, was “part and parcel” of the sale. But for tenants, it’s a catastrophe. On top of the $947 lot rent—more than double the national average—many residents also pay off home loans on their trailers, as well as insurance and utilities costs.
Oakland calls claims of broken utilities “nonsense”: “If it was such a bad place to live, why would the homes be selling for such high dollars?” he said. The rent strike, Oakland points out, is “just a group of people not paying their rent.”
Some people are rationing their medication to make ends meet, Moore said. “There’s one person who canceled Life Alert. It’s either Life Alert or rent, and if you don’t pay rent, they evict you and throw you in the streets.”
Tenant organizers across the nation have found a foothold in recent years organizing against individual landlords, and Bozeman’s tenant union, situated in one of the fastest-growing communities in the state, is no exception. Tenant unions from Los Angeles to Kansas City to New York have organized to win rent freezes, maintenance, and security in their homes.
Mobile home parks—increasingly private-equity-owned and uniquely at-risk in the face of climate disasters—are organizing, too: a group of trailer park residents in Columbia, Missouri, unionized in February. In Montana, as Rebecca Burns recently wrote for In These Times, mobile homes were already once a site of tenant organizing: buoyed by the state’s miners unions, the first Bozeman-area mobile home tenants’ union won an agreement with their landlord in 1978.
Oakland says park residents “have been terrorized by the union,” and plans to evict the strikers. The strikers say they’ve retained a lawyer and will fight to stay in their homes.
“I wish none of this was happening,” Moore said. “Your utilities should work. Your place should be safe. You should be able to get in and out of it. These are the absolute basics, and they just haven’t kept them up. And if you call them on it, they threaten you.”
MISSOULA, Mt. — Karsen Beitz arrived at Montana with no scholarship offers, one remaining walk-on spot and no guarantee that his track career would last.
Now, the former Sentinel High School standout is one of the fastest athletes in Montana history.
Beitz, a Missoula native and junior sprinter for the Grizzlies, has turned an unlikely college opportunity into a record-setting career. He owns Montana’s 100-meter and 200-meter program records and enters next week’s Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships as one of the top sprinters in the league.
Coming out of high school, Beitz was a football and track athlete without a Division I offer.
“I was upset about it,” Beitz said. “But at the same time, I was fine with just going to college and living a normal college life.”
That changed after conversations between Sentinel coach Dylan Reynolds and Montana coach Doug Fraley.
“You may not think he’s a D-I prospect based on his times,” Reynolds told Fraley, “but I’m just telling you, if he gets in the right program, he’s going to be a D-I runner.”
Fraley had one walk-on spot left on his roster. He brought Beitz into his office, talked with him and decided to take a chance.
“I liked him. We had a good conversation, so I decided to give him the last walk-on spot,” Fraley said. “I’m sure glad I did.”
Beitz became a Division I athlete in his hometown, but his first goal was modest. He wanted to prove he belonged and earn a scholarship.
He did that quickly.
As a freshman, Beitz placed at the Big Sky Outdoor Championships and helped Montana’s 4×100-meter relay reach the podium with a school-record performance.
“There was no doubt he earned that scholarship,” Fraley said.
Beitz continued to climb in 2025. He placed second in the 200 meters at the Big Sky indoor meet, but a hamstring injury kept him out of the outdoor championships.
“It sucked to deal with,” Beitz said. “But I’m young and still had two years left, so I shifted my mindset to how I could come out these next two years.”
He has not looked back.
Beitz won the 200 meters at the 2026 Big Sky indoor championships, the first individual conference title of his track career. His time of 21.09 seconds edged Idaho State’s Alex Conner by one-hundredth of a second.
“I think the best part about it was seeing how happy Doug was,” Beitz said. “He was jumping up and down, gave me a big hug. After last year, I knew what I was capable of, so to go out there and do it was amazing.”
Then came the outdoor season.
In April, Beitz broke Montana’s 58-year-old 200-meter record, running 20.55 seconds at the Pacific Coast Intercollegiate in Long Beach, California. The previous record had stood since 1968.
Two weeks later, he added the school’s wind-legal 100-meter record, running 10.25 seconds at the Bengal Invitational in Pocatello, Idaho. Which broke a 44-year-old program record and gave Beitz both sprint marks.
“He’s a really competitive guy, and he wants to be the best in the Big Sky,” Fraley said.
The records have not left Beitz satisfied. They have made him hungrier.
“You have all these goals and numbers in your mind,” Beitz said. “Then once you hit those numbers, you’re not satisfied. There’s just more numbers to chase.”
The next chase begins at the Big Sky Conference Outdoor Championships, scheduled for May 13-16 in Portland, Oregon.
After college, Beitz hopes to follow his mother’s footsteps and become a pharmacist. Maybe even the world’s fastest pharmacist.
“If I’m running around the hospital talking to doctors,” Beitz said, “I’ll do it pretty fast.”
From a walk-on few people noticed to a conference champion and school-record holder, Beitz has become Montana’s fastest man — and he is not done running.
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