In the early morning hours of April 28, 2015, a fatal encounter in a Billings, Montana trailer park cut short the life of 29-year-old Scott Marshall Hofferber, a White/Caucasian male. Hofferber was with a female acquaintance, Andrea Sattler, outside a vacant trailer she had been cleaning when they were approached by Joseph Richard Polak II. An exchange of heated words between Hofferber and Polak quickly escalated.
The verbal altercation turned deadly when Polak drew a.
45 caliber handgun and shot Hofferber. Sattler, the sole eyewitness to the shooting, recounted how Hofferber had attempted to hand a cat's paw tool to Polak just before the shot was fired. In the immediate aftermath, Polak fled the scene, leaving Hofferber fatally wounded. An autopsy later revealed that at the time of his death, Hofferber had potentially lethal amounts of methamphetamine in his system.
Two days after the shooting, on April 30, 2015, law enforcement located and arrested Joseph Richard Polak II. He was subsequently charged with deliberate homicide with a weapons enhancement, tampering with or fabricating physical evidence, and criminal endangerment. The tampering charge stemmed from allegations that Polak had disposed of the murder weapon, which was never recovered by investigators. A jury ultimately convicted Polak on all three counts. His conviction for deliberate homicide was later affirmed, although the tampering with evidence conviction was eventually overturned on appeal due to insufficient evidence.
