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Stevensville holds fundraiser for Trooper Palmer

Posted at 10:07 AM, Apr 14, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-14 12:07:47-04

STEVENSVILLE – Stevensville Family Medicine helped organize a community fundraiser on Saturday for the Highway Patrol trooper that was shot in March.

Trooper Wade Palmer lived in Stevensville with his wife at the time of the incident. He remains in stable condition in a Salt Lake City hospital after receiving mutliple gunshot wounds while on duty.

Trooper Jacob Parks worked with Palmer in Missoula and visited him in the hospital a couple weeks after the shooting.

“I got to spend some time down there with him and it really, seeing him fight and making little improvements really helps,” Parks said. “I was glad to come back and continue the work that he did and did well.”

Stevensville Medical Center Nurse Jill Schurman has known the Palmers for about four years. She said the incident was devastating.

“It hits hard, it pulls at your heart strings, knowing the family personally it just and the situation, and not knowing if he was going to make it or not,” Schurman told MTN. “What that does to your family — it makes you reflect and look at your own family.”

Sherman also added that if something happened to her family, the Palmers would do the same thing for them.

The medical center organized a silent auction and helped prepare food. Super 1 donated some of that food, along with the tents and space for the event.

T-shirts with the Bitterroot Mountains and badge number 301 were designed for the fundraiser, and Sherman said they’re making more.

Parks continued, “Things like this shake us, but then we see the support, that the community comes, […] it really reminds us why we do what we do.”

$36,200 was raised, including sales from the t-shirts.

MHP also has a list of approved fundraising websites.

-Reported by Katie Miller/MTN News