It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming! I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom, for Friday, April 19th.
A video showing a pair of 15-year-olds beating and stabbing 14-year-old Bobby Maher on April 7, along with an alleged threat to “gut that dude,” were enough to bind the teens over to adult court in Casper Thursday on murder-related charges.
Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck was in the courtroom for the proceedings.
“there are two videos related to the stabbing death of 14 year old Bobby Maher in Casper. The first video showed a confrontation between the two defendants with the 14 year old victim's girlfriend and his best friend in Evansville alley, where one of the defendants said to Bobby Maher's best friend do you want to pay a quote unquote 'blood debt?' The second video was of the actual fight at Eastridge Mall, it shows that Bobby Maher’s death happened very quickly, it they're circling around and he gets slammed to the concrete by one of the defendants and then the second defendant rushes in and hits him two times with what is barely visible, a knife was short three and a half inch knife two times in the chest. Bobby then gets up, walks toward the mall entrance and then collapses.”
Maher had gone to the mall to protect his girlfriend from being harassed by the suspects, and died after suffering multiple stab wounds.
With Wyoming in the crosshairs of an ongoing international scandal over the alleged abuse and killing of a wolf, the state is dialing back all its wildlife advertising.
Tourism reporter Renee Jean says the directive was detailed in an emailed advisory sent out to the Cowboy State’s travel sector and obtained by Cowboy State Daily.
“Wyoming Office of Tourism has decided that they are going to stop all of their advertising around wildlife watching. That's a huge draw for tourism in the cowboy state. It's at least $500 million of the 4 billion that tourists spend here every year. It supports 10,000 jobs. The email that we obtained says that the reason for that is related to that wolf incident in Daniel, Wyoming… Those photographs and images from the video have really made a lot of people very angry. It's brought hundreds of people to the cowboy state to a public comment session to personally comment about their outrage over the incident. And it's also brought a huge tidal wave of negative comments on social media platforms.”
Wyoming Office of Tourism Director Diane Shober said her team is continuing to monitor sentiment and activity around the incident, and will act accordingly.
After about eight hours of discussion and debate Thursday, the Bylaws Committee of the Wyoming Republican Party rejected a bylaws change - nicknamed the “Liz Cheney Amendment” - that would have allowed the state party to kick out members it doesn’t like.
Although dozens of amendments and changes were made to the rules over the course of the opening day of the state GOP convention at Little America in Cheyenne, it was all for naught as the Bylaws Committee rejected the proposal by a relatively wide margin, according to Political reporter Leo Wolfson.
“This could have been a major tool used during the upcoming 2424 election cycle to call out people specifically running as Republicans that didn't believe to be Republicans. It also is just a matter of trying to get people out of the party who had believed were not real, real Republicans kind of a downfall trend of crossover voting, which is the process of joining another political party to influence their primary election.”
One Laramie County GOP delegate said he believed people’s opinions about the bylaws evolved over the course of the discussion.
Under pressure from local elected officials to align the library to community standards or lose its board chair, the Fremont County Library Board approved changes Wednesday during an emergency session.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the Fremont County Commission had sent a letter to library board members earlier this month outlining a list of reform demands, along with the threat that if those weren’t resolved by May 1st, the commission would replace the Library Board Chair with Fremont County Commission Vice-Chair Mike Jones.
“One of the things the commissioners wanted was they wanted the book challengers and the board members, if there's an appeal to read the challenge books, they wanted everyone on board what's actually in the books. And so that passed, the Library Board had an emergency meeting Wednesday afternoon, where they decided okay, we will make challengers read the books. And as the board considers an appeal, board members have to read books.”
The board also approved a restriction on the frequency of challenges with the final decision for each challenged book will stand for three years.
And hundreds of mule deer are killed along a 25-mile stretch of U.S. Highway 26, roughly centered around Dubois, so a coalition of state agencies, along with tribal and private groups, has pegged it to be Wyoming’s next major wildlife crossing project.
It’s hoped that $2.7 million dollars in private money can be raised by July - outdoors reporter Mark Heinz says that should help snag a federal grant to cover the remaining balance of the estimated $28 million dollars needed for three wildlife underpasses and an overpass.
“That highway cuts right through the middle of a major mule deer migration route. They're the mule deer on migrating between Grand Teton National Park in the Wind River Reservation, seasonally, and but there's also a lot of elk bighorn sheep, white tailed deer and some other animals that cross the highway frequently there. So this is needed pretty sorely.”
Federal grants helped fund a pending wildlife crossing project along Highway 189 between Interstate 80 and Kemmerer, and were also used for a recently opened series of underpasses along that same highway between LaBarge and Big Piney.
And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming’s only statewide newspaper by hitting the subscribe button on CowboyStateDaily.com
I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
Radio Stations
The following radio stations are airing Cowboy State Daily Radio on weekday mornings, afternoons and evenings. More radio stations will be added soon.
KYDT 103.1 FM – Sundance
KBFS 1450 AM — Sundance
KYCN 1340 AM / 92.7 FM — Wheatland
KZEW 101.7 FM — Wheatland
KANT 104.1 FM — Guernsey
KZQL 105.5 FM — Casper
KMXW 92.5 FM — Casper
KBDY 102.1 FM — Saratoga
KTGA 99.3 FM — Saratoga
KJAX 93.5 FM — Jackson
KZWY 106.3 FM — Sheridan
KROE 930 AM / 103.9 FM — Sheridan
KWYO 1410 AM / 106.9 FM — Sheridan
KYOY 92.3 FM Hillsdale-Cheyenne / 106.9 FM Cheyenne
KRAE 1480 AM — Cheyenne
KDLY 97.5 FM — Lander
KOVE 1330 AM — Lander
KZMQ 100.3/102.3 FM — Cody, Powell, Medicine Wheel, Greybull, Basin, Meeteetse
KKLX 96.1 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep, Greybull
KCGL 104.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin, Lovell, Clark, Red Lodge, MT
KTAG 97.9 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KCWB 92.1 FM — Cody, Powell, Basin
KVGL 105.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Basin, Ten Sleep
KODI 1400 AM / 96.7 FM — Cody, Powell, Lovell, Basin, Clark, Red Lodge
KWOR 1340 AM / 104.7 FM — Worland, Thermopolis, Ten Sleep
KREO 93.5 FM — Sweetwater and Sublette Counties
KGOS 1490 AM — Goshen County
KERM 98.3 FM — Goshen County
Check with individual radio stations for airtime of the newscasts.
