WILLISTON — A man who barricaded himself inside a national historic landmark with weapons, prompting an hours-long standoff with law enforcement, has been charged with several crimes in federal court.
Last month, an employee at the Fort Union Trading Post, which sits west of Williston on the Montana-North Dakota border, showed up to open the site just before 8 a.m. on a Tuesday when she encountered a man near the gate. He was armed with a fire poker, she told 911 dispatch operators, and appeared to be carrying the fort’s donation box.
After deputies from the Williams County Sheriff’s Department arrived on the scene, they identified the man as Ian Patrick Stewart, a 36-year-old Williston resident, after his wife contacted them to say she believed her husband was at that location. Stewart, meanwhile, had barricaded himself inside the trading post with at least one gun, according to court documents.
A spokesman for the Williams County Sheriff’s Department told The Forum it was later determined that both the fire poker and the gun were taken from the fort’s museum displays.
Forum News Service file photo
Investigators called Stewart, who informed them he had 30 days worth of supplies and would not be leaving. Then he threatened to destroy artifacts at the fort and burn it down, and told law enforcement he would hurt them if they tried to enter.
Crisis negotiation and SWAT teams were brought in and communicated with Stewart throughout the day. Eventually, just after 5:30 p.m., Stewart turned himself in and was taken into custody, the Sheriff’s Department spokesman said.
Initially Stewart was facing a single burglary charge in state court, but a new federal indictment unsealed Thursday charges Stewart with several crimes.
During his standoff with law enforcement at Fort Union, the indictment alleges, Stewart also damaged federal property, and violated federal terrorizing, criminal and malicious mischief, disorderly conduct and interstate threats laws.
He is accused of threatening violence against a National Parks Service employee and Williams County law enforcement, as well as threatening to kill former President Barack Obama. Stewart also faces charges for threatening to harm three Williston residents, identified only by their initials in court documents.
Stewart was previously charged in Washington state last September for punching a highway patrol trooper during a traffic stop, and again in October for threatening to shoot a superior court judge.
Local media reports said Stewart spoke at a hearing
against the advice of his attorney, and claimed that he wasn’t receiving proper care from the Department of Veterans Affairs for PTSD and a traumatic brain injury.
Facebook posts from Stewart’s wife, Rachael Stewart, said he was a former Marine and Williston firefighter who had suffered significant physical and emotional trauma, including the loss of a 4-year-old son in 2019 and his best friend to a brain aneurysm in 2021. She said he had been suffering manic episodes since 2022 and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and PTSD, but that he hadn’t been given access to the proper treatment.
Rachael Stewart told The Forum she and her husband’s family had hit “wall after wall” with the VA and the courts trying to get Ian Stewart treatment, and “so many hoops to get him the proper care.” She said she and Ian’s family had reached out to law enforcement many times to alert them that his mania was escalating, but were told law enforcement could not get involved until a crime was being committed.
“He needs inpatient care but they don’t offer that kind of help for someone in Ian’s situation,” she said.
She said she plans to appeal to Gov. Kelly Armstrong to help advocate for and secure more resources for people like her husband after hearing “so many stories” from people in similar predicaments after publicly sharing her husband’s plight.
Hearings have yet to be scheduled in Stewart’s federal case, and no attorney was listed for him as of midday Friday.
