Billings woman killed in scooter wreck identified; sister killed in 2024 Laurel crash

While one woman was eventually sentenced for failing to stay at the scene of Kassi McColley’s death, the investigation into the crash that killed Kataraina is still ongoing.

“At this time there is no update,” Sgt. Jeff Stovall with the Billings Police Department wrote Wednesday in an email to the Gazette. “These crashes take months to investigate as there are many moving parts and we are at the mercy of data companies providing us with the information we request from their products that are on the vehicle.”

Late on the night of July 9, according to a statement posted to social media by BPD, Kataraina McColley was a passenger on a scooter heading west on Yellowstone River Road. A driver in a passenger car was heading west on Yellowstone River Road and made a left turn at Hawthorne Lane. The two vehicles collided.

The driver of the scooter, a 42-year-old man, went to a local hospital but was not seriously injured. Emergency crews pronounced his passenger, McColley, dead at the scene. The 28-year-old died of blunt force injures, Yellowstone County Deputy Coroner Rich Hoffman said Wednesday. A fundraiser is currently ongoing to assist in paying for McColley’s funeral service. 

The driver of the passenger car, according to BPD, remained at the scene and is cooperating with law enforcement. The department’s Crash Investigation Team has been assigned to the case.

In February 2024, detectives with the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office launched an investigation into the death of Kataraina’s sister, Kassi McColley. Days earlier, Billings woman Amber Dawn Walter was at the wheel of an SUV heading east on East Main Street outside of Laurel. Walter struck what she believed to be a deer when in fact it was McColley. McColley’s family found her body four days later amid a search.

Walter eventually contacted YSCO after the agency posted the make and model of the vehicle suspected of striking McColley on social media. In April 2024, Yellowstone County prosecutors charged Walter with failing to stop at a serious accident, a felony, and failing to give notice of an accident, a misdemeanor. In February 2025, Walter pleaded guilty to the first count. At Walter’s sentencing two months later, Yellowstone County District Judge Brett Linneweber gave Walter a six-year deferred sentence. 

Last year, BPD’s crash investigations team responded to 11 fatalities, 11 serious injury crashes, and four vehicular homicides, according to the department’s annual statistics report.

Earlier this month, a Billings man pleaded not guilty to accusations hitting a pedestrian while driving in the South Side. The pedestrian, Mollie Jensen, died June 30. That same day, Angelo Michael Oulman pleaded not guilty in Yellowstone County District Court to negligent homicide.