Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","text":"Now let's all watch a dog jumping rope..."}]

Daily smile 8 18 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, August 18, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Now let's all watch a dog jumping rope...

Daily Smile: Friday, August 18, 2023

 Now let's all watch a dog jumping rope...

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Courts

A Minnesota man says he was stunned to learn a stranger spent years building a life in Wyoming allegedly using his name — earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, fathering a child and leaving him to sort out the financial fallout with the IRS and owing child support.

Now, a Gillette welding worker is facing four felony identity theft charges after investigators say he used another man's name and Social Security number to obtain employment and official documents.

Jose Alfredo Guevara-Reyes, 45, made his initial appearance in Campbell County Circuit Court last week after being charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information.

According to court documents, the case began June 8 when Gillette police received a handwritten letter from Martin Almendarez of Minneapolis saying that someone working in Gillette had been using his identity.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Child Support Surprise"}]

For Almendarez, the first signs of trouble didn't come from Wyoming law enforcement.

"I learned that the man who stole my identity had fathered a child," Almendarez said. 

Because the worker allegedly used Almendarez's Social Security number, the child's mother initially believed Almendarez was the father, he said.

The situation escalated when the state of Wyoming notified him that he was on the hook to financially support the child.

"I got a letter from the state of Wyoming saying that they were going to garnish my wages,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Almendarez said even his employer questioned his identity as records tied to the alleged fraud surfaced. The Minnesota man said the ordeal was especially unsettling because he had never met the defendant.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I don't even know him nor have I ever been to Wyoming,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Welding Shop Discovery"}]

An affidavit filed in the case by Gillette Police Detective Brendan Trujillo says investigators contacted MC Welding Services after receiving Almendarez's complaint.

The company provided employment paperwork associated with the worker, including a W-4 tax form, an I-9 employment eligibility form, a Social Security card and a Texas driver's license bearing Almendarez's name, the affidavit says.

Police determined the Texas driver's license number actually belonged to another person in Texas, according to the affidavit.

Investigators then visited MC Welding and spoke with the employee using the documents.

The man then identified himself with a New Mexico driver's license as Jose Alfredo Guevara-Reyes of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

Reyes admitted to obtaining documents from a person in Texas for employment purposes but declined to identify the person.

The detective told Reyes the person who supplied the documents had essentially "set you up for failure,” the affidavit says.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"$500,000 Question"}]

Court records estimate Reyes worked at the welding company for more than four years, and a company employee told investigators that Reyes typically worked three 12-hour shifts each week and earned roughly $30 per hour.

The affidavit says he earned well above the felony threshold while allegedly using Almendarez's identity.

Almendarez believes the damage done to him may extend far beyond employment records.

According to IRS records he reviewed, he said more than $500,000 in earnings had been reported under his name.

"I heard he bought cars and put them under his name, a business in fabrication and other things like credit cards," Almendarez said.

The alleged victim also said he even worries someone might have obtained a life insurance policy using his identity.

[{"type":"text","text":"“Truthfully, it scared me to think it has gone on this long,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Relief Call"}]

After years of trying to untangle the situation from hundreds of miles away, Almendarez decided to write directly to authorities in Gillette.

[{"type":"text","text":"The response came quickly."}]

"A week later they called me saying he was in jail, and I felt so relieved," he said.

Even with the arrest, Almendarez said he believes he still has a long road ahead clearing his name with government agencies and financial institutions.

[{"type":"text","text":"For now, though, he says he finally feels like someone is listening."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I pray this turns out for the best,\" he said."}]

Reyes is being held at the Campbell County Detention Center on a $500,000 cash-only bond. 

He is expected to next appear in circuit court for a preliminary hearing on Thursday at 11:30 p.m.

Gillette police 5 31 23

<title>Gillette Welder Accused Of Stealing Identity, Leaving Man Owing Child Support | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Minnesota man says a stranger spent years building a life in Wyoming using his identity — earning more than $500,000, fathering a child and leaving the man owing child support. "I don't even know him nor have I ever been to Wyoming,” the man said.

Gillette Welder Accused Of Stealing Identity, Leaving Man Owing Child Support

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Hunting

A Wyoming man is apologizing for tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a controversial video that went viral last week.

Aron Snyder posted a video statement on social media over the weekend in which he says the coyote video was taken in Texas in 2019 or 2020.

He said that he finished off the wounded coyote with a knife because he didn’t have a firearm with him at the time. He also admits that the video is "a very bad optic."

Snyder also confirmed that because of the video, his employment has been terminated, and that he accepts that decision.

 to Cowboy State Daily last week, saying that Snyder is from Riverton. The video and accompanying information were also sent to wildlife agencies and animal welfare groups in Wyoming and several other states.

There was no response to messages to cellphone numbers registered to Snyder.

Cowboy State Daily reached out to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), asking if the department is investigating the incident depicted in the coyote-killing video, and if any reaction might result.

TPWD law enforcement spokeswoman Maggie Berger promptly responded with an email saying she would check into it, but was swamped early Monday.

“We are currently responding to service calls due to flooding and severe weather in multiple areas of the state as well as much time being dedicated to the new world screwworm response,” she stated.

There is concern in Texas that an emerging screwworm infestation in cattle will 

. There’s also worry that it could eventually hit big game herds in other states, including Wyoming.

Response to the coyote video has been overwhelmingly negative. Some hunters and animal welfare advocates have condemned the depicted actions as unethical and cruel.

However, some social media commenters have supported Snyder, saying the video shows him doing what he had to do to kill the coyote with the means he had at hand at the time.

In the video, Snyder is seen stabbing the coyote once in the shoulder area. Supporters have commented that indicates he was trying to puncture the coyote’s lungs and/or heart, which would have resulted in a quick death.

In his statement, Snyder said the video was taken during a coyote hunt “after an ice storm” in Texas.

“The coyotes were wreaking havoc on my buddy’s cattle, horses (and) dogs, as they do,” he said.

He said he drove an ATV to the location where the coyote in question was, but had left his gun behind in a pickup.

“When I got to it (the coyote), um, it wasn’t dead, it was still alive,” he said. "Pulled it out of a brush pile, um, kicked its legs out from under it, stabbed it, you know, it was growling at me, I kicked it again."

He also said he performed a “dead check” on the animal. That’s a term hunters use for checking to make sure an animal is dead.

Snyder said he recalled that he might have stabbed the coyote once more, although the video clip shows him stabbing it only once.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Bad Optic’"}]

Regarding the video, Snyder admits that “it’s a very bad optic, I understand that, for the hunting community. That wasn’t my intention but even when I watched it, it looked bad."

He said that if one watches predators “tear apart” wildlife, dogs and livestock “you do lose value and respect for them (predators)."

“That’s not an excuse that’s just a fact of life, and my actions that day showed that,” Snyder said.

Snyder also said the fallout from the video could be a “blessing in disguise” because it gives him a reason to get off social media and simply enjoy being outdoors.

Paul Ulrich, president of the Wyoming Sportsmanship group, previously condemned what he saw in the video.

After seeing Snyder’s video on Monday, Ulrich told Cowboy State Daily that “it’s encouraging to see somebody admit they made a mistake.”

“He certainly notes that it’s ‘bad optics,’ and it is. But at its heart (what’s in the coyote video) is just bad behavior. It’s cruel and the antithesis of a clean kill,” Ulich said.

Wyoming Sportsmanship was instrumental in getting the so-called “Clean Kill Bill” passed by the state Legislature and signed into law.

It makes it illegal to deliberately prolong the suffering of predatory animals, such as coyotes, in Wyoming.

Ulrich noted that according to Snyder’s account of events, Snyder apparently wasn’t properly prepared “to make a clean kill,” because he left his firearm behind in a pickup.

Hunters should keep their rifles or shotguns, or a sidearm, at all times to quickly end wounded animals’ suffering, Ulrich said.

Although Snyder apparently killed the coyote in the video in Texas, Ulrich said that the incident can carry a universal message for hunters.

Ulrich said he appreciates Snyder acknowledging losing a value and respect for predators.

“Hopefully he finds that value and respect for all wildlife again someday,” Ulrich said.

“I hope this gives us all the opportunity to take a deep breath and realize our responsibility to respect all wildlife, including predators,” he added.

Snyder could also use his prominent position in the outdoor world to spread the message, Ulrich said.

“He has an opportunity, and I hope in some small way he takes advantage of an opportunity to do the right thing,” he said. “And perhaps the message for today is that we pass those values of respect for all wildlife on to the next generation."

Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy announced Monday that it was offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to a conviction for a felony cruelty to animals charge in connection with the events shown in the coyote-killing video.

After being sent a link to Snyder’s apology by Cowboy State Daily on Monday, the group’s president, Wayne Pacelle, said the reward offer still stands.

Although the alleged location and time frame of the Coyote killing were revealed by Snyder, Pacelle said new information might expand upon Snyder’s account or contradict elements of it.

“I’m not accusing him of that (falsifying details of the coyote incident). I just don’t want to make assumptions that these claims are true," Pacelle said.

If the coyote was killed in Texas as far back as 2019, that state’s statute of limitations for cruelty to animals charges might have run out, he said.

In that case, “he (Snyder) could escape prosecution for his malicious cruelty,” Pacelle said.

He added that he found Snyder’s apology lacking.

“He didn’t apologize so much as he excused it,” Pacelle said, and added that in the original video, Snyder appears to be unnecessarily cruel to the coyote “with relish.”

Pacelle also criticized Snyder’s apparent actions leading up to the coyote being wounded in the first place.

“There’s an ethic in hunting of knowing where you’re shooting and knowing how to deliver a killing shot,” he said.   

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fired From Born Primitive"}]

After the video emerged, the Born Primitive Outdoor clothing and gear company announced that it had 

“Born Primitive Outdoor supports ethical hunting and holds itself and its partners to that standard,” the company says in the announcement. "The behavior shown in the video involving Aron Snyder does not align with that standard. 

"As a result, Aron Snyder is no longer an employee of Born Primitive,” 

A message requesting further comment from Born Primitive was not answered by publication time.

In his video statement, Snyder confirmed his termination from the company saying, “my actions are mine. Born Primitive should not be held responsible. I respect their decision.”

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include reacton to Snyder's apology video.

Aron Snyder inset 6 15 26

<title>‘A Very Bad Optic’: Wyoming Man Apologizes For Controversial Coyote Killing Video | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming man named Aron Snyder confirms he’s the person seen tossing, kicking and stabbing a coyote in a video. The video is “a very bad optic,” he says while apologizing in a weekend social media post.

‘A Very Bad Optic’: Wyoming Man Apologizes For Controversial Coyote Killing Video

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

CHEYENNE — A dad who once traded a black powder rifle for a rusted Model T decades ago left his four daughters and son with a lot of memories, and a lot of antique cars and parts.

That Model T acquired in the late 1950s began a hobby and series of antique cars that over nearly 70 years kept Alex Connell, who died on May 1, 2025 — and sometimes his kids — digging into Wyoming dirt for rusted treasure. 

They once scoured a national park as part of their dad’s effort to uncover car frames and find parts that would be transformed by the self-taught craftsman.

Now Connell’s legacy fills two garages and a barn on the north side of Cheyenne that contains three Packards mostly restored and nearly all the parts for an extremely rare 1907 American Underslung Roadster.

There also are scores of other parts for Packards, Model Ts and Model As.

“We had Bonhams come and look at them and they were so excited,” said Kathy Dillmon, Connell’s youngest daughter, referring to the international auction house. “We let them take a 1916 Studebaker, it wasn’t the best one.”

The price the car went for at an Arizona auction was well below the value the Bonham representative told the family it would likely bring. 

Their dad left them his estimates of the value of his cars. Now the heirs are looking at a long and winding road to determine next steps in selling their dad’s passion and collection.

The remaining nearly restored cars include a 1909 Packard Limo, 1909 Packard Touring Car, and 1929 Roadster.

Connell’s children — Kim Parker, 72; Kay Irwin, 70; Kris Connell-Johns, 67; Tom Connell, 65; and Dillmon, 67 — now have the cars listed with Horseless Carriage Club of America at reduced prices. 

They know that the older generation interested in antique models like these has given way to Baby Boomers more interested in Mopar muscle cars.

But they have stories to tell about family outings at Cheyenne Frontier Days parades, where they were all dressed in period clothes while riding in one of their dad’s restored machines.

Parker said both of their parents were born in Michigan, Alex Connell in Muskegon and Luann in Holland.

Connell enlisted in the U.S. Air Force after graduation from high school and was assigned to F.E. Warren Air Force Base for his technical school as a lineman.

After arriving on the base in 1952, one day her dad told his squadron’s leadership a story after mail call.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Story"}]

“Daddy told his commanding officer that he got a woman in trouble in Michigan and he had to get married right away,” she said. “That was a lie.”

The family story is that Connell hopped a train “like a hobo” and went back to Muskegon to knock on the door where Luann lived. 

Her mother answered on a Friday night and asked him what he was doing back in Michigan.

“I’m here to marry Lucy and we’re going to do it tomorrow,” Parker repeated her dad’s lines. “We’re going to get a train and go back to Cheyenne by Monday.”

The unsuspecting Luann, aka “Lucy,” agreed. 

Her mother and grandmother helped put together a Saturday wedding and they were married. She was 17, he was 19.

The couple caught a train back to Wyoming that had them sitting up in passenger seats for 24 hours, Parker said.

When they got to Cheyenne, they walked seven blocks from the depot to an apartment he had rented for them. 

Two years later, both his mother and Luann’s mother died of cancer, and Connell obtained a hardship discharge. They moved back to Michigan with 1-year-old Kim to help their families.

In Michigan, two more daughters (Kay Irwin and Kris Connell-Johns) were born. But the couple missed the West and the mountains. 

They moved back to Cheyenne in 1957 and Connell joined the pipefitters’ union and became an apprentice, and then journeyman, Parker said.

Connell’s children said that their dad’s career involved several construction projects that included schools, a water plant, hospitals and a lot of work for the Air Force on missile silo construction.

Kay Irwin remembers her dad one day being contacted by an F.E. Warren Air Force Base officer to do some welding at a missile site and how a helicopter was sent to pick him up and take him out there. He returned home at the end of the day.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Car Hobby Begins"}]

Tom Connell said his dad’s love of antique cars and restoring began before he returned to Wyoming. 

He had been a aficionado of black powder rifles when he learned about an old Ford someone had in Marne, Michigan.

“He traded a black powder rifle for a Model T,” he said. 

Alex Connell went on to become a self-taught craftsman and expert restoring cars, graduating to Model As and more upscale Packards, American Underslung and Pierce-Arrow Motor Cars.

In an article written for the Horseless Carriage Gazette in 1983, Alex Connell described how he restored a 1910 American Underslung after a friend showed him a flexible brass tube that he found while antelope hunting next to what he thought were remnants of an old Ford.

Connell pestered the friend to take him to the location, and when he got there saw the potential for something special.

“There, in a wash, lay the entire body, fenders and hood from a 1910 American Underslung just as it had been left there during the first part of World War II,” he wrote. “I found the owner of the property and he told me how he wrote to a scrap metal dealer in Torrington and instructed him to go to the ranch … and scrap out the old cars and machinery there and buy war bonds in the name of the owner.”

Connell wrote that he began his effort to restore the car, which spanned several years of finding parts, learning to fabricate his own on a metal lathe or using wooden frames and sheet metal to fashion parts.

Over the decades, his children estimate their dad collected and restored dozens of antique cars, then traded and sold many of them.

As part of their dad’s restoration efforts, the Connell kids remember their mother finding and making period clothing for them all to wear and driving the cars in a succession of Cheyenne Frontier Days parades.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Movie Showcase"}]

Parker said when the movie “The Great Race” was released in 1965 starring Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon,  the local theater recruited her dad to display the American Underslung at the theater.

“It was such a great movie that the Paramount Theater downtown asked dad if they could put his main Underslung in the theater, and it was all roped off with beautiful brass poles and red velvet,” she said. “It was a beautiful showcase car.”

The Connell children grew up in a home that their parents built that came mostly from recycled materials from an Air Force base warehouse that their dad contracted to tear down. 

It was part of several home showcase tours, they said.

All remember their father coming home from work and going to garage where there were metal lathes, saws, and tools for his restoration work. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"There was always a project going on."}]

“I remember when I was, like, 10 years old, he had taken me in his truck and he was going to get this car frame out of Horse Creek that was kind of buried in the sand, and he dug and dug and couldn’t get it out,” Kay Irwin said. 

“And he put a two-by-four under the frame and he had me lean over on that two-by-four and bounce on it and try it get it out of the creek bed. We finally ended up getting it,” she added.

Parker said the only real family vacation they ever took involved their dad announcing they were going to go to Yellowstone. 

The family piled into a cab-over truck with a big trailer behind and instead drove to the south entrance of Grand Teton National Park.

Her dad parked the rig in the middle of a forest. 

That’s when Alex Connell broke the told his family that they weren’t going to vacation in Yellowstone and instead search for a Packard body that he heard was buried in a creek somewhere in Grand Teton.

“So, we spent days and days looking for that body in a creek,” Parker said. “I was walking in the woods and I couldn’t have been more than 12 or 13, and I walked up on an elk that was fully horns.

“I backed up, he just stayed there and watched me.”

After days of no luck finding the Packard, the family went to Yellowstone to visit Old Faithful, watched it erupt, then drove to Thermopolis to go swimming, she said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Restoring Pierce-Arrow"}]

Tom Connell tells the story of his dad meeting a man in a town east of Colorado Springs who owned an old Pierce Arrow Roadster that was identical to his dad’s Packard. 

The owner who was up in years told Alex Connell he bought the car when he was kid.

“He wanted to drive that some day before he died and he didn’t want to sell it,” Tom Connell said. “Right next to it was an old Lincoln Bus, and in the spur of the moment (dad) said, ‘I’ll take that car home and restore if for you in exchange for that Lincoln Bus.'”

Tom Connell said he and his dad hauled the Pierce Arrow back to Cheyenne and over a period restored it so that it was able to be driven and returned it to the Colorado owner. 

That man cried when they brought it back to him.

Alex Connell got the Lincoln Bus, but never got around the restoring it. It remains on the property as an item for his children to deal with.

Dillmon said her father sold and traded his restored cars and parts with people throughout the country and Europe, and she has boxes of his correspondence about parts and other facets of his restoration expertise.

Alex Connell also got into refurbishing big, old Minneapolis Steam Tractors and took a class to learn to drive them. 

The family story is that Luann Connell made him sell them because one day he drove a tractor into the house. The tractors were sold to a man in Argentina.

Working hard on his restoration efforts into his 70s, Alex Connell slowed down in the last two decades of life, but maintained his efforts in the garage for as long as he could. 

Luann Connell died in January 2025, and that same month Alex Connell fell and developed a brain bleed that required surgery.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"Alex Connell died May 10, 2025. "}]

His children remain busy trying to find the right homes for his beloved antique vehicles and parts, but thankful for the memories he left behind.

“The goal is to find passionate buyers within the vintage car community who will drive, preserve, and enjoy them,” Dillmon said.

Dads Cars Connell Siblings 6 14 26

<title>Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The children of a Cheyenne car restorer inherited a lifetime collection of antique Packards and car parts that include a nearly complete disassembled 1907 American Underslung Roadster. Their goal is to find a buyer who will preserve and enjoy them.

Cheyenne Dad Leaves His Five Heirs Antique Packards — And A Lifetime of Memories

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Business & Tourism

Work is nearing completion on the first 184,000-square-foot phase of the Related Digital data center campus in Cheyenne, which is expected to be finished in late 2026. The company says because of its closed-loop system, there’s no ongoing water required.

Daily Smile: Friday, August 18, 2023

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