UPDATE: Suspected Sheridan Cop Killer Caught! 30+ Hour Standoff Finally Ends.
UPDATE: Neighbors Devastated Over Killing Of Sheridan Police Officer
Either before or during the moment he allegedly shot a Sheridan police sergeant to death, William Franklin Lowery, 46, was ordered to leave a rented house in which he’d been squatting for five months.
Lowery is suspected of shooting Sheridan Police Department Sgt. Nevada Krinkee to death Tuesday morning. As of 3 p.m. Wednesday, he remains in a nearly 30-hour armed standoff with tactical and police agents from all around Wyoming. He’s holed up in someone else’s home on 5th Street and North Sheridan Avenue.
Krinkee was trying to serve a trespass notice on a “male subject” when Lowery allegedly shot him, SPD announced in a Tuesday statement. The agency did not say whether the notice was to trespass Lowery from the rented house.
This Civil Case Says …
Lowery started renting a home on 5th Street in Sheridan, Wyoming, on Aug. 15, 2022. He agreed to pay $1,100 monthly rent, according to a civil dispute filed Jan. 19, 2024, in the Sheridan Circuit Court.
But he quit paying rent starting in September 2023, and owed his landlords close to $6,000, says the civil complaint.
Lowery’s landlords sent two notices in October and one Dec. 29, 2023, telling Lowery to leave their house, but he reportedly ignored them.
The Sheridan County Sheriff’s Office served a notice on Lowery on Jan. 10, giving him three days to leave the house.
Still he refused, says the complaint.
Final Notice
On Feb. 8, five days before Lowery allegedly shot Krinkee to death, Sheridan Circuit Court Judge Sheryl S. Bunting judged the case in the landlords’ favor and ordered Lowery to vacate the apartment house no later than noon Monday, Feb. 12.
She also ordered Lowery to pay $5,803.44 in late rent plus $120 in other costs to the landlords.
Pulling Out A Woman’s Hair
Before the renter’s dispute, Lowery racked up a lengthy Wyoming criminal history dating back to 1993, starting in Gillette and ending in Cheyenne.
Most recently, he was charged with felony domestic battery as a repeat offender in 2015, after Sheridan police responded to a call where, after drinking alcohol, Lowery choked his girlfriend, pulled out some of her hair and threatened to kill her.
He gave a portable breath sample of 0.27% the day of his arrest, Halloween 2015.
Following a plea agreement filed in that case, Lowery gave his guilty plea in exchange for a sentence of four years’ supervised probation, with the threat of between three and five years in prison if he failed probation.
He completed his probation March 27, 2020.
In a pair of lesser charges, a Wyoming Highway Patrol trooper ticketed Lowery for tailgating in 2017, in Sheridan County.
A Sheridan police officer arrested him on suspicion of child endangerment in 2018. That charge was later dismissed.
Older Charges
Lowery’s earliest recorded criminal case in Wyoming was in 1993, when he was convicted of buying or receiving stolen property in Gillette. He was convicted of being a minor in possession of alcohol that same year.
He was convicted of driving drunk in Gillette in 2001, when the legal limit to drive was still 0.10% blood-alcohol content.
In 2001, Gillette authorities recommended a battery charge against him, but that was dismissed, as was a reckless endangering charge from that year.
Charged with aggravated assault in 2001, he was later convicted on that or a related charge in 2002.
A 2002 criminal entry charge against Lowery was dismissed by Gillette authorities.
Moved To Sheridan
Lowery moved to Sheridan sometime in 2007 or before.
He was charged in 2007 with drug possession in Sheridan, and convicted four months later.
Authorities charged him in November 2008 with beating a pregnant woman. He was convicted of misdemeanor-level domestic battery after that.
By 2011, Lowery was facing yet another another domestic battery charge, this time in Gillette. He pleaded no contest to that.
He was convicted in 2012, of drunk driving in Gillette.
In 2013, he pleaded guilty to a battery charge and received a two-year probation term.
Lowery was cited in Sheridan on April 7, 2015, for driving without a mandatory interlock device, and later found guilty.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
