Missoula police murder homeless man

What those details illuminate are a difficult life lived in both light and dark, with kindness and distrust, in what appeared to be poverty but may have been chosen homelessness.

Even his name is something of a mystery. In numerous criminal cases filed against him over the past decade, he was known as Gregory Ray Ramsey. But after his death, officers found a Montana state identification card that showed his last name as Greg Baumann.

“Right now, I am calling him Baumann because that’s the ID we found on him,” said Missoula County Sheriff’s Capt. Greg Hintz, who is coroner on the case.

That’s what his stepsister, Dot Keller, called him years ago, although her father, George Baumann, said he never formally adopted Greg. Baumann eventually divorced Greg’s mother, but Greg lived with Baumann for years and moved to Missoula after Baumann came here in 1986.

“I wanted to adopt him, but his mother wouldn’t let me,” said Baumann. “She didn’t want anything good to happen for that boy.”

Baumann/Ramsey had been homeless for years, but he had a Social Security disability that paid him $1,000 a month.

“For a long time, he had a truck with a camper that he slept in,” George Baumann said. “But he had such an authority problem that even having a truck put him in conflict.”

In fact, Baumann/Ramsey often argued that he had a “right” to drive and didn’t need a driver’s license.

Although he had constant run-ins with law enforcement the fact that he was wanted on two warrants precipitated the Sunday morning showdown that left him dead he also was well-known at the Missoula Food Bank, where he volunteered for years.

“There was a kind side to him that I think people should know about,” said fellow volunteer Michael Kreisberg. “If you just let him do the work, he could be a wonderful person.”

Missoula law enforcement officials remain silent on the details of the shooting. The Missoula County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the death because Missoula police officers were involved, but Hintz has said that only the county attorney can talk about the investigation.

So far, that hasn’t happened.

The Missoulian has pieced together some of the particulars through law enforcement sources and family members, but hasn’t learned the names of the officers involved in the shooting.

Those officers are on administrative leave pending the investigation and required sessions with a mental health professional.

Early Sunday, Baumann/Ramsey was asleep behind a bench on the trail that winds through the park just east of Orange Street on the south side of the Clark Fork River.

A police officer on patrol spotted his Trek mountain bike and stopped. The officer found Ramsey/Baumann wrapped in North Face sleeping bags and checked his identification. Running his name through 9-1-1 produced two warrants for failure to appear in Justice Court.

Because of the warrants, the officer prepared to arrest Baumann/Ramsey, who became belligerent.

At least two other officers and eventually a supervisor arrived to back up the initial officer.

“What the sheriff told me is that Greg started shouting that he wasn’t going to jail and wasn’t going back into the court system,” said George Baumann. “I know he wouldn’t have wanted that to happen.”

One officer apparently considered using a Taser on Ramsey/Baumann, but he was down behind the bench, which made access tough. Another officer then used pepper spray on him, but Ramsey/Baumann could not be subdued.

In the midst of the disturbance, Ramsey/Baumann pulled a semiautomatic .45-caliber pistol from his sleeping bag and fired a shot.

George Baumann said he was first told that the shot was fired into the air, but later learned the shot was fired in the direction of officers.

“It surprises me that he would try to shoot someone, but it doesn’t surprise me that maybe he wanted them to shoot him,” said Baumann. “I do think this is probably a case of suicide by cop, although I guess we’ll never really know.”

After the first shot, Ramsey/Baumann’s gun jammed, but two officers were already firing on him, striking him numerous times in the chest. Even the park bench he was sleeping behind has bullet holes in it.

Missoula Police Chief Mark Muir said he believes his officers acted within the law and department policy during the shooting.

And Ramsey/Baumann’s family members said they felt sympathy for the officers who encountered him that night.

“The thing with the weapons doesn’t surprise me,” said Dot Keller, who now lives in South Dakota. “A lot of people who live on the streets are armed, and that makes it very difficult when police have to have contact with them. It’s tragic that this is what it came down to.”

Greg Ramsey was born in 1962 in Iowa. George Baumann met Greg when he was about 6 years old, and said the boy had had a hard life.

“His real dad had run off before he was born, and his mother just didn’t want anything to do with him,” said Baumann.

He and Dot Keller said Greg spent some time in an orphanage and foster homes as his mother tried to sort her life out.

Baumann married Greg’s mother, Lisa Sappe, in 1969, and said he’d occasionally come home from work to find Greg gone.

“I’d say, ‘Where’s Greg?’ and she’d say she’d run him off,” said Baumann. “He was just a little boy. So I’d have to take off and find him.”

When Baumann got divorced from Greg’s mother, Greg stayed with him. He eventually joined the Navy, but was discharged as his schizophrenia began to emerge.

“In his early 20s, I think that’s when he had his first episodes of fragmentation,” said Keller. “Things just got very hard for him after that, and he struggled with schizophrenia all his life.”

As he got older, the disease seemed to get worse, Keller said.

During his years in Missoula, Greg spent some time living with George Baumann, and he did some work as a finish carpenter. Eventually, though, he couldn’t work for another man.

“Basically, he would get fired because things had to be done his way,” said George Baumann. “That really made it to where he couldn’t work.”

About 10 years ago, Greg was committed to the Montana State Hospital. He was treated and thrived for a while on medication, but Keller said he eventually fell through the cracks.

“He’s the sort of person who is not going to take his medication if he’s left to his own devices,” Keller said. “He needed some sort of network of support, but we haven’t really figured out what to do with the mentally ill who live on the streets. It’s so sad.”

Greg committed a series of mostly misdemeanor crimes — drugs, disorderly conduct, obstructing police over the past five years, and he came to distrust both police and attorneys.

He was particularly adamant that Justice Court had no authority over him because of the way the court displayed the American flag.

In fact, George Baumann said Greg was yelling about the flag shortly before he was killed Sunday morning.

“Once he got something in his head, he just couldn’t let go of it,” he said. “And now it looks like it killed him.”

Reporter Michael Moore: 523-5252 or mmoore [at] missoulian.com
http://www.helenair.com/articles/2008/12/24/state/110st_081224_police.txt