By Dennis Bragg, KPAX TV
WHITEFISH, Mont. — Whitefish Police say the host of an outdoor television program is dead, and the man who shot him has taken his own life.
Detectives say 43-year-old Gregory Rodriguez of Sugar Land, Texas was shot and killed as he was visiting a Whitefish woman during a business trip to Northwest Montana late Thursday night.
The case is still being investigated, but police know that Rodriguez, known as a television personality and host of outdoor programs, was visiting a local woman staying at her mother’s house at River Lakes Parkway in Whitefish.
Police say that at around 10:30 p.m. the woman’s husband, Wayne C. Bengston, came to the house and shot Rodriguez and brutally beat his wife.
Police say Bengston then took off with his 2-year-old son who had been sleeping in the house and drove away. He left the boy unharmed with a relative and then drove to his house in West Glacier.
That’s where Flathead County deputies and a SWAT team found his truck. Authorities say they attempted to contact Bengston with no success, and when they entered his house they found Bengston dead of a gunshot wound to the head.
