Traffic stop leads to apparent suicide

The Daily Inter Lake

Authorities have released the name of a Columbia Falls man who is believed believe to have committed suicide Saturday afternoon during a traffic stop in Columbia Heights.

Wayne Poil, 62, died about 4:40 p.m. Saturday from what appears to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, investigators said.

According to the Flathead County Sheriff's Office, Poil was eastbound on U.S. 2 in Columbia Heights when a Montana Highway Patrol trooper (with a unit conducting intensive traffic enforcement in the county's high-crash corridors' noticed Poil's pickup truck had expired license plates and initiated a traffic stop.

As the truck pulled off the road, the trooper noticed Poil pull a rifle from near the back window. The truck then crossed a field, where it stopped after running into a fence.

Because Poil was slumped over and out of sight, the trooper called for backup before approaching the truck. Deputies with the Flathead County SWAT team, which responded with an armored vehicle, and Highway Patrol troopers later found Poil dead in the front seat.

The apparent suicide is still under investigation, but Poil recently had lost his job and experienced a death in the family, according to Flathead County Sheriff's Patrol Cmdr. Dave Leib.

Poil, who had a misdemeanor warrant out of Columbia Falls, had been drinking before the shooting occurred, Leib said.

Officers found the man's pickup truck with the doors locked, windows rolled up, and no holes from bullets fired from outside the vehicle. A .22-caliber rifle was recovered from the cab, Leib said.

Medical examiners at the state crime lab in Missoula conducted an autopsy Monday morning to confirm the cause and manner of Poil's death, but those findings were not available before press time.

Because he had been pulled over, Poil technically was under custodial detainment when the shooting occurred. A civilian coroner from Lincoln County was called in to do the investigation, Leib said.