four dead in mass shooting at montana bar with gunman on the loose

A manhunt is underway in the woods after four people were shot dead at a small town Montana bar.

The mass shooting broke out at The Owl Bar in Anaconda around 10.30am on Friday,said the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation.

A bartender and three patrons were pronounced dead at the scene.

The suspect was last spotted near Stump Town,which is a short distance west from Anaconda. He is believed to be armed.

Michael Paul Brown lived next door to the bar (Picture: Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Law Enforcement)

He has been identified as Michael Paul Brown,45,and resided next door to the bar,public records showed.

The bar owner,David Gwerder,confirmed the details.

‘He knew everybody that was in that bar. I guarantee you that,’ said Gwerder,who was not at his business at the time of the massacre.

‘He didn’t have any running dispute with any of them. I just think he snapped.’

Police and other emergency personnel responded to a shooting in Anaconda,Montana,on Friday morning (Picture: AP)

SWAT team members searched the Brown’s home in Anaconda and he was nowhere to be found. They are hunting for him in a wooded,mountainous area.

More than a dozen police officers swarmed the woods and a helicopter flew over the mountain,said a retired cop,Randy Clark,who lives in the area.

A shooting left four people dead in the small town of Anaconda,on Friday (Picture: AP)

Business owners said they were still under lockdown two hours after the shooting.

‘We are Montana,so guns are not new to us. For our town to be locked down,everybody’s pretty rattled,’ said Barbie Nelson,owner of Firefly Café.

The suspect on the loose is believed to be armed (Picture: AP)

‘It’s a small town,so we all probably know someone who was there.’

Governor Greg Gianforte wrote on X that he is ‘closely monitoring the situation involving an active shooter in Anaconda’.

Anaconda is roughly 75 miles southeast of Missoula and has a population of about 9,000.

The massacre happened four days after New York City’s deadliest mass shooting in 25 years,involving a Las Vegas man who drove to Midtown Manhattan and fatally shot three people in a skyscraper lobby and another on the 33rd floor. He then turned the gun on himself.