Drunk driver sentenced for fatal wreck near Somers

Flathead County District Court Judge Dan Wilson handed down Thursday a partially suspended 20-year sentence to the drunk driver who struck and killed a motorcyclist near Somers in 2022, citing the sincerity of his remorse and efforts to address his alcoholism, among other factors. 

“There are those who view that taking a life for the offender means that his or her life is then forfeit — one minus one equals zero,” Wilson said before announcing 51-year-old Apollo Guisto’s sentence in the felony vehicular homicide case on Jan. 4. “But justice is not a zero-sum game. It is a process of balancing and weighing the aggravating and mitigating factors on the separate sides of the scales of justice, so to speak.”

Guisto departed a Somers-area bar on Sept. 2, 2022 bound for his home in Bigfork when the collision with Jason Catron occurred at the intersection of Somers Road and Montana 82, according to court documents and witness testimony. Though Guisto allegedly told authorities he came to a stop at the intersection and the motorcycle collided with him, investigators determined that the Bigfork man’s Toyota Sequoia ran the stop sign prior to the fatal wreck.