Gordon Orders Flags At Half-Staff For Slain Sheridan Police Officer

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon has ordered all U.S. and Wyoming flags be lowered to half-staff in honor of fallen Sheridan Police Department Sgt. Nevada Krinkee, who was killed in the line of duty Tuesday.

The order will remain in effect for the time being for all flags at the Wyoming Capitol in Cheyenne and at governmental buildings in Sheridan County.

Gordon said his order will be extended statewide once a date of interment for Krinkee has been announced.

On Tuesday, Gordon and first lady Jennie Gordon offered their condolences to Krinkee, his family and the entire Sheridan County law enforcement community.

“I join all of Wyoming in mourning the loss of Sheridan Police Sergeant Nevada Krinkee,” Gordon said in a press release. “This senseless killing is a solemn reminder of the selfless risks our law enforcement officers take each day when they put on the badge.”

Standoff Continues

For more than 24 hours, Sheridan law enforcement — and agencies form across the state — have been in a standoff with a man suspected to have killed Krinkee.

Krinkee had been trying to serve a trespass notice when he was shot. The Sheridan Police Department called the tragedy “senseless.”

A track hoe excavator, a pressure hose, at least one Bearcat armored vehicle and a legion of armed agents have been bearing down on a home in a residential Sheridan neighborhood since late Tuesday morning, pressuring the suspect behind Krinkee’s killing to give himself up.

As of noon Wednesday, an army of Wyoming law-enforcement and SWAT teams still surrounded the suspect, William Lowery, 46.

At one point on Tuesday evening, someone inside the home fired toward law enforcement agents. One of the agents was sitting on top of the Bearcat when the shot “popped,” reportedly.

SPD called the tragedy “senseless.”

State Sen. Dave Kinskey, R-Sheridan, said his thoughts and prayers continue to go out to Krinkee’s family.

“My prayers continue for Officer Krinkee and his family, as well as for all law enforcement on site at the home where the suspect has barricaded himself- may they all be safe,” Kinskey told Cowboy State Daily.

First For Sheridan Police Department

The national Officer Down Memorial Page has logged 62 line-of-duty deaths for Wyoming law enforcement agents stretching back to 1877 — 13 years before Wyoming became a state.

Of those, 37 deaths were due to direct gunfire, two to inadvertent gunfire, three to stabbings, one from vehicular assault, and the rest from various crashes, accidents and medical events. Three of them were K-9 police dogs: two of those died by vehicle strikes and one by heat stroke.

Including the dogs, Wyoming has averaged roughly one line-of-duty death every two years and four months.

Tuesday’s incident was the first line-of-duty death in the history of the Sheridan Police Department.

There have been two line-of-duty deaths for Sheridan County as a whole before Tuesday, both out of the Sheriff’s Department.

Those were Underhsheriff William H. Veach, who died from inadvertent gunfire June 13, 1914, and Undersheriff William S. McPherren, who was shot to death Oct. 7, 1921, according to the Officer Down Memorial Page.

Krinkee’s death is also the first homicide of an officer since June 26, 1997, when three Wyoming State Penitentiary inmates stabbed Wyoming Department of Corrections Cpl. Wayne Martinez, 27, to death during an escape attempt. The suspects fled in a truck, but other officers shot at them at an exterior fence. They survived and were convicted of Martinez’s murder and sentenced to life in prison.