Leland Chapman, son of reality TV star Duane “Dog the Bounty Hunter” Chapman, announced this week that he spent 17 days tracking a man across Wyoming and Montana sought in connection with the shooting death of a 19-year-old on Montana’s Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation — only to repeatedly find his man and discover he couldn’t legally put him in handcuffs.
Chapman was hunting Sage Francisco Spang, whose photograph the Billings Police Department put out to the public more than a year ago while investigating the July 2025 death of Wayland Lance Limpy Jr. of Lame Deer.
“He wasn’t difficult to locate,” Chapman said then in a video statement to MTN News. “I just legally can’t go on there and arrest him.”
On Thursday, Chapman announced that Spang had been arrested on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation.
In a public statement about the case, Chapman said he spent 17 days there in July and August, quickly located Spang and repeatedly tried to get authorities to arrest him.
Billings police had been looking for Spang since July 29, 2025, when investigators identified him as a “person of interest” in the shooting connected to Limpy’s death.
Cowboy State Daily has asked Billings Police whether Spang has been formally charged in Limpy’s death and what warrant led to his arrest, but did not receive a response.
19-Year-Old Arrives At Hospital
The case began late July 23, 2025, when a badly injured 19-year-old man arrived at Billings Clinic in a private vehicle and was later pronounced dead.
Billings Police began investigating what the department initially described as a possible homicide. Investigators traced the shooting back across town to the 700 block of Cook Avenue, a residential stretch between North Seventh and North Eighth streets in Billings.
Two days later, the Yellowstone County Coroner’s Office identified Limpy.
Deputy Coroner Rich Hoffman said at the time that Limpy’s cause and manner of death remained under investigation.
Under Billings Police Department’s own death-investigation policy, police approach unattended deaths as potential homicides during the investigation, while the coroner determines the final cause and manner of death.
'Nobody Wants To Do It'
By July 29, police were asking for the public's help finding Spang. Then, more than a year later, Spang's trail attracted Chapman.
On Sept. 1, he said he spotted Spang at a gas station, in a parking lot and at a bar. When Chapman didn't have eyes on him, he said people were messaging him with information about Spang’s whereabouts.
Chapman appeared visibly exasperated as he described repeatedly locating Spang but being unable to get anyone with the authority to make the arrest.
“Nobody wants to do it,” Chapman said, questioning aloud whether the jurisdictional “roadblocks” he kept encountering were legitimate — or “just excuses.”
Then-Northern Cheyenne Tribal President Gene Small told MTN there were warrants involving Spang and that, to his understanding, they were awaiting a judge’s signature.
Small said the wait stretched beyond 25 days.
“We want to get a hold of him because we can’t be having that in our community,” Small said, adding that Spang had also been accused of another assault.
Northern Cheyenne tribal officials did not respond to multiple questions from Cowboy State Daily about Spang, Chapman’s efforts to locate him, and the jurisdictional obstacles Chapman described.
'Everything That I Got'
In the same interview with MTN, Chapman said the days kept piling up.
“I was there for 17 days working this kid with everything that I got,” he told MTN.
Eventually, he said, he left.
Chapman’s work takes him around the country, and Montana wasn’t his first bounty hunt in this part of the West.
More than a decade earlier, he came to Wyoming with his famous father and late stepmother, Beth Chapman, for a hunt in Casper with Action Bail Bonds.
The resulting episode of Dog and Beth: On the Hunt was called “Rock Bottom Bounty.”
The official Apple TV listing says the Chapmans headed to the “wilds of Casper, WY” to help local bondsmen pursue an Iraq War veteran who had gone on the run.
The next episode took the Chapmans to Montana.
“Big Sky Bounty,” which aired a week later, followed the family into the Montana mountains, where they joined John Briggs and the bounty hunters of Western Bail Bonds. Their target that time was described as a difficult fugitive with a history involving drugs and guns.
Screaming Hawk
On Chapman’s latest trip to the Treasure State, the man he was chasing was part of a case that began with a 19-year-old whose family buried him more than a year ago.
Wayland Lance Limpy Jr.'s obituary says he was born Dec. 28, 2005, at Crow Hospital and was given the Cheyenne name “Screaming Hawk.”
He grew up between Lame Deer, Helena and Colstrip and graduated from Lame Deer High School in May 2024.
He liked basketball, football and wrestling. He played Xbox with his younger brothers, shot hoops at People’s Park and rode his bike around Colstrip with friends.
His family remembered him as protective of his siblings.
Limpy was buried at Lame Deer Cemetery on July 28, 2025 — five days after the night he was rushed to Billings Clinic and died.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
