Laramie County’s top prosecutor is waiting to see what chemicals, if any, were in the body of a man shot multiple times and killed last month in the stairwell of a Cheyenne apartment complex.
It also looks “unlikely” that the shooter — an upstairs neighbor reportedly intervening in a domestic altercation — will be charged with a crime, Laramie County District Attorney Sylvia Hackl told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
An upstairs neighbor in an apartment complex on the 1700 block of Oxford Drive told the Cheyenne Police Department that he went to intervene in a domestic fight the evening of March 30, and shot the man in the disturbance.
The neighbor had reportedly heard a “loud physical disturbance” during a domestic conflict involving a man and a woman in the apartment below him. He grabbed his pistol, went downstairs to intervene and got into a conflict with the man in the apartment complex stairwell, resulting in the latter being shot multiple times and dying, police announced April 1.
Waiting On Evidence
Hackl said she’s waiting on more evidence before making a charging decision on the case.
“With respect to the most recent, unfortunate shooting, we are waiting for toxicology results on the deceased,” Hackl told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday.
Hackl said investigators are interested in whether the decedent was intoxicated or under the influence of something, “given his behavior at the time.”
The case is still in the Cheyenne Police Department’s purview. If the agency finds probable cause for a potential criminal charge, it will send that evidence to Hackl’s office. If it does not, it will inform Hackl so her office can make an independent decision, she said.
“But at this point it looks unlikely we’ll file charges,” she added.
Wyoming’s self-defense statutes say that anyone who uses deadly force to prevent imminent death or serious bodily injury, either to himself or to someone else, is justified if he acted in a way that a reasonable person would in the same circumstances.
Self-Defense That Time
This is not the first time this year Hackl had to weigh justification in a fatal shooting.
Hackl told Cowboy State Daily in February that the evidence indicated James Gulley, 32, was acting in self-defense in a different case Feb. 15, when a man bearing an 18-inch-long pipe wrench reportedly challenged him on a road in residential Cheyenne.
Gulley shot the man to death, court documents say.
The deceased man’s brother, Leandro Dominguez, is accused of shooting at Gulley and ultimately hitting him in the foot, prompting Gulley to return fire and shoot Dominguez in the thigh.
Dominguez is charged with attempted murder.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
