Law roundup: Pair of friends make bone-rattling discovery

Halloween came early for a pair of friends taking in a sunset from a gravel pit near Kalispell. The two told the Flathead County Sheriff’s Office that they found a crashed pickup truck in the pit and inside a skeleton. The two were unsure if the skeleton was human or deer.

A Bigfork resident, meanwhile, found a surprise gift in her mailbox: a half-finished can of chewing tobacco.

In Lakeside, a homeowner told deputies that a man came up over the fence and ran through the yard, screaming all the while.

A parent arrived at the Sheriff’s Office hoping a deputy would speak with her apparently thieving 6-year-old daughter. The mother told authorities she was at her “wits’ end” and needed someone to explain the repercussions of stealing to the child.

A Columbia Falls resident worried that a dog running loose in the neighborhood would cause an accident. Meanwhile in Kalispell, a dogsitter asked for help in catching their ward after it got outside. That dog was eventually returned to the sitter.

A resident in the Kalispell area reported their neighbor to authorities for allegedly flying a drone over their property.

Worried about the threat posed by bears, a person in Bigfork asked deputies to send several kids riding a minibike back and forth in the neighborhood inside. The minibike was also noisy, the caller said.

A mother asked for help in getting her 18-year-old son’s keys. She opened his backpack to find beer inside and was worried he would get behind the wheel.

Someone staying in the area asked for help with their neighbors, who allegedly were being mean to her.

The bartender at a Kalispell area watering hole contacted authorities for help with a man who tried to start a fight. Someone told the bartender that the man was hanging around outside with a gun.

Deputies played a game of telephone with an individual who told them that a friend said, via text, that some neighbors were fighting. As it turned out, neither the caller nor the friend were at the location where the fighting was supposedly happening. The friend received a text about the fight from his mother and then texted the information to the caller, who phoned authorities.

Someone reported a stolen scooter in the Kalispell area. The caller told deputies they assumed it was stolen because the scooter was intended for people with medical conditions and the operator was clearly too healthy to be driving it.

A dog-owner contacted authorities after getting in a fight with a friend. She was worried that her pet had been poisoned.