Megan Gresham of Wyoming said Monday that her husband Dennis was killed in a series of crimes that ended in the deadly shooting of a suspect barricaded inside a West Billings home.
Dennis "Denny" Gresham, 33 years old, Sheridan, Wyoming, was found by authorities after a law enforcement chase with a Ford van and two suspects who crashed on private property at 43rd Street West and fled the scene.
Officers captured the female suspect shortly after the crash. The male suspect broke into a home just south of Rimrock Road and west of Shiloh and holed up inside a home for nearly nine hours before he was killed by police when he opened fire on officers. Authorities have not yet released their names.
Late Monday afternoon, Sheriff Mike Linder said in a news release that Dennis Gresham had been identified as the man found dead in the van. Linder said Gresham died from several gunshots. Linder added that they do not have any information that would indicate Gresham knew the man and woman who ran from the van after it crashed.
The van was owned by Gresham, whose wife Megan told MTN News that he had been in Billings on Friday morning to get a day of work in before picking up a good friend at the airport around 1 pm. She said the family had enjoyed a nice dinner at the Valley Brewing Company in Sheridan, and Denny buckled their kids in the car before saying goodbye.
Gresham says her husband left Sheridan around 2:30 a.m. and arrived in Billings at the Yellowstone River Campground around 4:30 a.m. She said that might sound odd to some, but not for Denny who loved taking adventures in his van.
Gresham said Denny did not show up on his 7 a.m. virtual call with work, but she says she wasn’t worried until he did not pick up their California friend at the Billings airport six hours later. At that point, Gresham says she and friends started calling hospitals and law enforcement agencies trying to track down the silver van. All this, she says, while officers were in the middle of a standoff with the suspect holed up in the home on Ridgewood Lane South.
Gresham said she posted on Facebook asking anyone if they had seen Denny, and a couple of hours later one of their friends sent a link to a story about the chase and standoff in Billings, and a photo of her husband’s crashed van.
“And then, I couldn't even read. I saw the pictures. That is my van. It's very recognizable," she said. "I knew it with a very specific detail on the side. I hated the van. I hate the van. It was obviously our van and I, but I couldn't even read it.”
Gresham says there is a surveillance video from the Yellowstone River Campground that shows a man and woman approaching her husband’s van early Friday morning. They first talked to him through a window and then she says the two people got in and the van drove away.
Gresham says she knows her husband was just doing something nice, and that they probably asked for a ride. "I'm sure he was helping them, is my best guess," she said. "I don't know the details, and I want the details, but I don't have them right now."
The Gresham’s have two little boys, one 5 and the other almost 3. Gresham says her husband loved his kids more than anything in the world. Her husband designed car washes, she said, from the building layout to the nuts and bolts.
A GoFundMe account has been created to help the family; click here if you would like to donate.
At this point, authorities have not yet released the name of the two suspects. We will keep you updated as we get more information.
