Would-be casino robber is still at large

Sheriff’s deputies are still looking for a man who used a gun to try and rob an Evergreen casino Wednesday night.

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said the roughly 6-foot-tall man was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt and a mask when he walked into Player’s Club on U.S. 2 East at about 6:20 p.m. He then approached a clerk, pulled out a handgun and held up a small piece of cardboard that said “give me all your money.”

“The clerk said, ‘I’m not giving you any money,’ then the guy just left,” Curry said, adding, “That’s obviously not our recommendation of what to do in that situation.”

The would-be robber fled the scene on foot before police arrived, cutting across between businesses and heading toward the highway.

Along with the suspect’s unusually subservient behavior, despite being armed, the clerk also noted another oddity — the mask seemed to be homemade.

“The clerk said it looked like it had been hand-painted with gray stripes under the eye holes, like what football players use,” Curry said. “There were also no mouth or nose holes, just eye holes that had been cut in. He said it looked like it had been homemade.”

After the incident, calls were made to casinos and other businesses around the area looking for anyone matching the description.

“It prompted a flood of calls about suspicious people, and that’s good, that’s what we wanted,” Curry said. “But as you can imagine, there were lots of people in hoodies.”

One report from Glacier Gold Casino in Columbia Falls seemed promising, but the person turned out not to be the suspect. Deputies from the sheriff’s office, with assistance from Kalispell Police officers and Montana Highway Patrol troopers, searched the immediate area around the Player’s Club, but were not able to track the suspect’s footprints anywhere.

Curry asked anyone with information about the incident to call CrimeStoppers at 752-8477.