Amber Bright was skinning a deer with her husband behind their apartment Sunday night when she heard a sort of whooshing sound.  

“We kind of talked about it for a second, but we just assumed it was sprinklers,” she recalled.  

It was about 10 p.m. behind the Colonial Villa apartment complex at 836 E. Washington St. Bright kept hearing the same sound at random intervals.   

While looking up from the deer she was dressing, Bright said she saw a man she had never seen before walk out of a carport on the property.  

Bright described him as a roughly 6-foot-tall man with blondish hair, a baseball cap, white shirt and what looked like jeans and hiking boots. 

“I thought maybe it was one of the new people who had moved in and he had just went under the carport to smoke,” Bright said. “The only thing suspicious about it was he walked out where he shouldn’t have been.” 

It wasn’t until the next morning that Bright learned that the sound she heard was car tires being slashed. Residents reported that around 10 cars in the complex had popped tires.  

Bright said that one of her neighbors called law enforcement Sunday night after discovering the vandalism. Her vehicle was spared, she said. 

Several cars parked in the carport and central parking area could be seen with one or multiple flat tires on Monday afternoon. 

LATER SUNDAY night, long after Bright had gone to bed, resident Deborah O’Neil was outside walking her puppy near East Idaho Street. It was just before 11 p.m. when she heard eight popping sounds, one after the other.  

“I just quickly got the dog and said, ‘You know, let’s just go inside,’” she said. “Unfortunately, I ignored it, thinking I’m just being silly.” 

Looking back, she said it sounded like a semi-automatic rifle.  

Kalispell Police Chief Jordan Venezio released a statement on Monday morning that authorities were investigating several reports on Sunday night of gunshots being fired downtown and the city’s south end.  

“We have not received any reports of injuries or property damage,” read the statement.  

While the statement does not mention slashed tires, residents of Colonial Villa Apartments believe the vandalism and subsequent gunfire are connected.  

“Everybody seems to be kind of assuming that. That’d be a really big coincidence if it wasn’t,” Bright said. 

O’Neil said law enforcement came by the complex Monday morning. 

 “[They] didn’t want to give us a whole lot of information because they’re gonna cause a panic because he is still out there,” she said of the perpetrator. 

In his statement, Venezio said authorities were working on several leads in the hopes of identifying a person of interest in the investigation into the reported gunfire.  

Several Kalispell Police officers were posted at the Parkline Towers Apartments, located across the street from Colonial Villa Apartments, on Monday morning. They said their presence was connected to the shooting investigation but declined to answer additional questions. One police vehicle remained at the complex by mid-afternoon.  

Venezio said more information on the reported gunfire will be released on Tuesday.  

Reporter Jack Underhill can be reached at 758-4407 and [email protected].