BOZEMAN — Friday night, a woman was out for a walk with her dog in Bozeman when tragedy struck.
“My husband told me about what happened here, and I was shaking. I'm like, ‘Oh my god, that could have been us,’” says Nancy Crawford.
Nancy has lived in Bozeman for around 20 years. She told me she walks her dog, 13-year-old Butterscotch, around the area of 3rd Avenue in Bozeman every day.
I asked her, “In your 20 years of doing this, have you always felt safe walking down this road?”
Nancy told me, “Yes, but I'll tell you, since COVID a lot of people have come here and they’re from different places. And a lot of them just seem to be in a hurry."
At 3rd Avenue and Longohr Avenue in Bozeman, flowers are already piling up at a memorial for 60-year-old Lynette Johnson. Friday night at around 7 p.m., Johnson was out walking her dog along South 3rd Avenue. That’s when a vehicle left the roadway and struck Johnson and her dog.
The vehicle then went through a fence and into a house, the impact damaging a gas line and causing the block to be evacuated. Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene after life-saving efforts were unsuccessful. Her dog also did not survive.
I met up with Detective Captain Dana McNeil who has been working this case. He told me:
“Incidents like these are very uncommon. This is sort of an extreme circumstance for sure, to have a vehicle that actually leaves the roadway, crashes into somebody, and into a house. That's a very extreme circumstance."
McNeil tells me the driver of the vehicle was taken to Bozeman Health Deaconess Regional Medical Center after the incident, but he believes the driver is now released. The reason behind the crash remains unknown and is still under investigation.
But McNeil tells me, “What happens in these types of investigations is that we might get a warrant to search for blood or other bodily fluid to try and see if there’s any type of impairment there."
And although McNeil says this incident was a rare occurrence, I asked him, “Would you say that pedestrians in Bozeman are safe?”
He told me, “Pedestrians who are obeying traffic laws are very safe in our community. I would say that this is an extraordinary circumstance, that I don’t really know if there's anything that as a pedestrian you could do to avoid."
But Nancy told me regardless of this being a rare occurrence, she still feels that safety is slipping away.
“Now I see this while we’re walking, and it’s just another indication where I’m not feeling safe in Bozeman," she said. "This is my home.”
