25 year-old Antonio Moreno appeared in Missoula Justice Court on Wednesday before Judge Alex Beal, who held Moreno on a $25,000 bond because ‘you can’t safely exist in the community’ due to his problem with alcohol.

Moreno was charged with felony assault with a weapon and with violating his parole for another incident.

Deputy Missoula County Attorney Carrie Garber explained her request for another $10,000 bond in addition to the $25,000 hold for his probation violation.

“The defendant was just recently revoked (probation) on his sentence about six weeks ago and is now just a short time later is in bars threatening to shoot employees,” said Garber. They're causing them some very serious concerns, and it’s just disturbing behavior.”

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Garber agreed with Judge Beal that Moreno’s alcohol issues require him to remain in custody.

“He has a serious alcohol problem, and the state believes that he needs to remain in custody until he can actually get a bed date and go do treatment,” she said.

Moreno was in a local café when he became violent and after reaching into his pocket claiming to have a firearm, he allegedly threatened an employee of the café.

“Although this turned out to be a false alarm as far as him not actually having a weapon in his possession, he made the threat,” she said. “He was clear about the threat and the employee took it extremely seriously. He comes back as a level three active, and I will note, your honor that he does have just in 2021 a conviction for misdemeanor assault, so he has followed through with causing injury or harm to others within the last year.”

The public defender asked Judge Beal to release Moreno on his own recognizance, however, Judge Beal stated that the current $25,000 probation hold would stand.

When Moreno asked the judge to reduce the bail, Beal refused, stating that he wanted the bail amount to be high enough so that Moreno could not be released, stating ‘at this time, you can’t safely exist in the community’.

His next court date is February 28 in Missoula District Court.

The information in this story was obtained from sources that are publicly viewable.

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