A 27-year-old East Glacier man was sentenced Wednesday to 11 years and eight months in prison, to be followed by five years of supervised release, after he admitted to fatally shooting another man after a birthday party on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.
Dillon James Wippert pleaded guilty in December to second degree murder before Chief U.S. District Judge Brian M. Morris.
According to court documents, Blackfeet Law Enforcement Services officers on May 19, 2020, responded to a residence in the Bear Paw community where family members had found the body of the 19-year-old victim in his bedroom.
Investigators learned that the victim and his friends gathered at his residence on May 17, 2020, to celebrate Wippert’s birthday where drugs had been consumed.
As the party was ending and the attendees were coming down from the drugs, Wippert pointed a firearm at another friend, scaring him, causing Wippert to argue with the victim.
Wippert and the victim were eventually the only people left at the part when Wippert shot the victim in the arm and the back of the head with a firearm.
Wippert told authorities that he had a “panther” in him and described himself as a weapon. When investigators pushed for a motive for the killing, Wippert’s only explanation was that he held ill feelings and that the victim had given him an “evil smile” and given off “death threat energy.”
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kalah A. Paisley, Lori Harper Suek and Wendy A. Johnson prosecuted the case. The FBI and Blackfeet Law Enforcement Services, with assistance from the Cut Bank Police Department, Glacier County Sheriff’s Office, Mineral County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Marshals Service, conducted the investigation.