Wyoming man allegedly prowled Billings shelter to coerce women into sex

Staff at the Montana Rescue Mission reported the suspicious activity earlier this month that brought the attention of law enforcement. Reid is the second man this year to face felony charges in Yellowstone County for allegedly trafficking unhoused women.

Monday’s hearing concluded with Justice of the Peace David Carter setting Reid’s bail at $25,000. Should he post bond, Carter ordered that Reid be monitored by GPS while staying in his hometown of Powell, Wyoming, and not come within 300 feet of MRM or St. Vincent de Paul.

“If you don’t come back to court,” Carter said to Reid, “you’re coming back the hard way. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” said Reid, who appeared from Yellowstone County Detention Facility via teleconference.

On Aug. 12, MRM employees reported to the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation that a man at the wheel of a white Chevy SUV was driving around and soliciting clients at the shelter. A DCI agent told the staff members to contact him if the man ever returned. MRM called DCI the next day.

On Aug. 13, an MRM employee informed the DCI agent that the man in the white SUV was again badgering women staying at the shelter, noting the SUV’s license plate number. DCI traced the vehicle as being registered to Reid, court documents said. A deputy with the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office stopped the SUV, and Reid allegedly agreed to speak with the DCI agent.

In that conversation, Reid admitted that he was “looking for hookers,” according to charging documents. Reid allegedly told law enforcement that for the past two years he has frequented Billings looking for homeless women to goad into sex, prowling MRM, St. Vincent de Paul and South Park.

When the agent searched Reid’s SUV, court document said, she found a blanket, a wad of cash and a cooler filled with bottles of vodka. The agent spoke with an MRM client who allegedly confirmed that Reid had solicited her for sex. Although police first issued Reid with a notice to appear in court and released him from custody, he allegedly returned to MRM to pester women.

His return prompted law enforcement to arrest Reid, and he remained in jail over the weekend. On Aug. 14, Yellowstone County prosecutors charged Reid with aggravated sex trafficking.

The circumstances and dangers that homeless people face hobble studies documenting their experiences. What data is available make it clear that women living in shelters or outdoors are survivors of physical and sexual violence at rates much higher than housed women and homeless men. Research collected by the peer-reviewed Journal of Urban Medicine indicated that roughly 40% of women experiencing homelessness had suffered sexual violence at some point in their lives.

Earlier this year, a man already convicted of sex trafficking was accused soliciting women in a similar manner. Brian Irl Ward, 68, allegedly hung around homeless services in Billings, offering food, clothes, alcohol and drugs to women in exchange for sex. After pleading not guilty to aggravated sex trafficking in April, Ward has remained in custody at YCDF since then with his bail set at $100,000. Leading up to his arrest, Ward was just a few months into a suspended sentence out of Missoula County. In November 2025, Missoula County District Judge Jason Marks sentenced Ward to 20 years of probation after he drove a woman to Missoula to have sex with a man in exchange for money.

In 2023, the Montana State Legislature overhauled the language of sex trafficking statutes to offer local prosecutors distinct definitions of labor trafficking, child sex trafficking, sex trafficking and aggravated sex trafficking, through which to charge offenders. From 2021 through 2025, the Montana Department of Justice opened 515 cases into human trafficking, according to data from DCI. In that same period, DCI identified 82 adult survivors of human trafficking in Montana and 22 children.