A 71-year-old man who was shot and killed earlier this month in the Chief Garry Park Neighborhood may have been the victim of a murder-for-hire over the affections of a prostitute, according to court documents.
Police also said the shooting suspect then killed himself in Eastern Montana.
The Spokane shooting happened after 10 a.m. Nov. 9 near the area of Lacey Street and Riverton Avenue. Officers responding to a call found a man later identified as Donald Gunstrom dead in the road, according to search warrant documents this week in Spokane County Superior Court.
Gunstrom had been shot multiple times in the chest, face and head. He also had injuries consistent with being struck or dragged by a vehicle, police wrote in documents. Police learned a white Chrysler minivan had sped away from the area.
The Spokane County Medical Examiner's Office said Gunstrom died from multiple gunshot wounds and blunt-force injuries.
Spokane police Officer Daniel Strassenberg said no one has been arrested. But investigators believe a 59-year-old man was the shooter. Police disclosed in court documents that the man was found dead two days after the Spokane shooting at Pompeys Pillar National Monument, about 32 miles east of Billings, with evidence that could link him to the shooting.
Many of details police are working with came from a 25-year-old woman, who lives in a South Riverton Avenue apartment near where the shooting happened. She told police her 50-year-old ex-boyfriend hired someone to shoot the 71-year-old Gunstrom, who she moved in with the day before the shooting.
She met both men while working as a prostitute, the woman told police.
She said she was tired of living with her ex-boyfriend because he mentally and physically abused her. Prior to moving out, she said her ex told her he was going to kill Gunstrom if she ever went "back to Don's again," the woman told police.
She told police she had messages in her phone proving her ex set up the killing, but then said she didn't have any of the texts because she got a new phone after her ex took her old one. She said Gunstrom received threatening texts from her ex on his cellphone.
The woman told police that, moments before the shooting, she and Gunstrom got out of his 1977 MG convertible in the apartment parking lot and started walking toward the apartment, documents say.
She said she saw an older white man with white hair, a black sweatshirt and black sweatpants pointing a black pistol at Gunstrom. She told police she started running toward the apartment units and pounded on a neighbor's door to let her in.
She told police she couldn't remember if she heard the gunshots or saw the gunman first, but believed she heard four shots fired. She said she saw Gunstrom hobbling from the front of the car to the street and said all the shots were fired while Gunstrom and the shooter were on a sidewalk, according to documents.
The woman wasn't sure whether the gunman tried to shoot at her, but an officer found a bullet hole on the side of the apartment entryway.
The windshield of the convertible was riddled with bullet holes, police wrote in documents.
The woman said the damage was from when her ex shot at the vehicle four or five months earlier because she was spending time with Gunstrom. They never reported the damage because Gunstrom couldn't prove her ex damaged the car even though her ex told her he shot the windshield.
Police found spent shell casings along with bullets from a .380-caliber gun scattered on the ground near Gunstrom's body in the street and in the apartment building parking lot, according to court documents. Two handgun magazines were also found at the scene.
Eight gunshots can be heard on security footage from an Illinois Avenue home across the Spokane River from the shooting scene, according to police in documents.
A Ring camera on a nearby residence captured the suspect's vehicle, later identified as a 2024 white Chrysler Pacifica with Illinois license plates, police said in documents. The vehicle was captured on a different camera heading east on Interstate 90 near the Barker Road exit about 30 minutes after the shooting. The vehicle had been rented to a 59-year-old Whitman County man who police believe was the shooter.
Two days after the shooting, police were notified by Yellowstone County Sheriff's Office deputies in Montana that they located the Whitman County man's body near Pompeys Pillar. It appeared the man died by suicide, and a .380-caliber handgun was found near the body, according to police.
A shell casing recovered near the body was similar to those recovered at the Spokane homicide scene, police said in documents.
The Pacifica sought by Spokane police was also found at the scene. A "bloodlike substance" was found under the car near the engine compartment, police wrote.
Detectives are trying to establish relationships between those involved, understand the circumstances surrounding the shooting and identify more witnesses and other potential co-conspirators, police wrote.
The firearm found with the dead suspect in Montana has not been confirmed to be the weapon used to kill Gunstrom, according to court documents.
"Further investigation is needed to confirm or dispel another person assisting (the man) as an accomplice in this crime," police wrote.
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