BILLINGS — In the last week, three people have died after being involved in car wrecks where a suspect was evading law enforcement.
It started on Sept. 9, when 28-year-old Julian Wolf was struck and killed on his motorcycle by 42-year-old Jimmy Joe Flanagan, who was fleeing from Yellowstone County sheriff's deputies.
“He (Flanagan) is no stranger to the criminal justice system. He has history, albeit most of it for felony matters is nonviolent drug history,” Yellowstone County Attorney Scott Twito said on Monday.
According to public records, Flanagan had a record in Lewis and Clark and Yellowstone counties. In Lewis and Clark County, it started with sentencing in 2005 for issuing a bad check the year prior and escalated to endangering the welfare of children and criminal possession of dangerous drugs in 2015.
In Yellowstone County, he also was sentenced to a felony possession of drugs in May of this year.
“Mr. Flanagan had bonds set on what we call a probation violation or revocation, as well as a new drug charge this summer. It started out in May, and that case was proceeding through the system at the time of this incident, the more recent incident here. He posted bond in that process, according to my records, indicated that he posted a $10,000 bond,” Twito said. "Traditionally, there's a lot of challenges, obviously with jail overcrowding and all those issues. With regard to bail, courts really look at the type of offense that they're charged with. So when we're talking earlier this summer, in Mr. Flanagan's case, or any person for that matter, a nonviolent offense, typically, not always, but typically will have a lower bail with less conditions than a more violent dangerous offense or a dangerous offense."
A rumor emerged online that Flanagan was an informant for law enforcement, and that is why he was not in jail, but to Twito's knowledge, that's not true.
"I went and I asked my prosecutors involved in the prosecution of this case. I looked at everything that I had. I couldn't see where he was some sort of informant being released because of his status as an informant. I didn't see that. I didn't note that. Nothing popped out to me. I don't believe that to be true, at least based on the information I was able to gather," Twito said. "I don't see anything in the case that we talked about at the beginning where this was some sort of special treatment because of some sort of status as an inside informant or something, I just don't think that's the reality here."
On Sept. 13, another crash killed two others when 32-year-old Ricky (Ricki) Buckhanan was fleeing from Billings police.
“We had dealt with him (Buckhanan) a year ago on an extradition for another state that the state declined to extradite him under the required procedure. And so that was dismissed. So that was more of a procedural thing. That was the only thing I saw on him and my records,” Twito said. “I think Billings, we need to, I think we all need to work together to deal with public safety issues in this community.”
