Naw, Montana Garage!!!

A Montana man was charged Monday with deliberate homicide in the
shooting death of a teenage German exchange student in his garage.

Police said Markus Kaarma was upset that his home had been burglarized
twice in recent weeks, and he told a stylist Wednesday at Great Clips
that he’d been up three nights in a row waiting for another break-in.

“I’m just waiting to shoot some f—ing kid,” he told the stylist,
according to police, who were called to the salon because Kaarma
refused to stop swearing and acting belligerently.

According to investigators, he shot and killed 17-year-old Diren Dede,
who had been attending Big Sky High School in Missoula, inside his
home early Sunday.

The 29-year-old Kaarma and his wife, Janelle Pflagler, set a trap in
the garage by leaving her purse sitting in plain view with the garage
door open.

The couple had catalogued all the items inside the purse “so they
would take it,” police said, and set up a live-streaming baby monitor
and motion detectors.

One of those motion detectors was triggered shortly after midnight
Sunday, and Kaarma went outside to investigate.

He walked out the front door to the driveway, police said, where he
heard sound in the garage but could not see inside.

Kaarma fired four shots into the garage, three low and four high in a
wide sweep, and told his wife to call 911.

Then he fired four more shells into the garage after hearing a man
yell, “Hey.”

“He stated he thought he was going to die and that the guy would try
to get out of the garage and described thinking he could act like a
caged animal,” police said in court documents. “He assumed that he had
a knife or a tool from the garage, however, he could not be sure
because the garage was pitch dark and couldn’t see anything inside. He
stated he didn’t want the male to get away and that he wanted him to
be caught.”

Another man with Dede fled afterward, and police said they have
identified and questioned him.

Police aren’t sure why Dede and the second man were in the garage, but
the case remains under investigation.

Under Montana’s “castle doctrine” law, a person is justified in using
deadly force if they have a reasonable belief that force is necessary
to prevent an assault on themselves or another member of the
household.

Another Montana man shot and wounded a 19-year-old houseguest about
two hours earlier in Billings after mistaking the seminary student for
an intruder.

The cases are not otherwise related.