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

<title>Daily Smile: Wednesday, May 8, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Attention span of a puppy...

Daily Smile: Wednesday, May 8, 2024

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

After Wyoming’s most famous diesel delete mechanic Troy Lake 

 Nov. 7 from President Donald Trump, he started advocating for other mechanics who, like him, were hit with prison time, fines or both for tampering with diesel emissions systems.

[{"type":"text","text":"Trump pardoned nine more diesel delete mechanics Friday."}]

 before he was pardoned, had advocated for six of those:

Ryan and Wade LaLone, Tim Clancy, Matt Geouge, Mac Spurlock, and Joshua Davis.

Wyoming-based lobbyist Jeff Daugherty and Colorado-based attorney Stewart Cables, who work with Lake and his fledgling group Diesel Freedom Coalition, had represented five of those six (not Davis).

Besides pardon-related advocacy, Lake said his group is working to provide sound emissions evidence and mechanical strategies to policymakers, to persuade them to pivot toward emissions regulations that don’t crush small-time trucking businesses and other fleets.

“Sometimes it makes you think, are we really making any traction? Are we really going anywhere? Because government moves at a snail pace,” Lake reflected in his Monday interview.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then came Friday, and the news of pardons. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“And all of a sudden, it’s there,” the Cheyenne man said.  "}]

Lake said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is another key advocate. Sullivan had taken up Spurlock’s case and written a March 12 letter to the president urging a pardon.

The other three delete mechanics pardoned Friday were: Jonathan Achtemeyer, Aaron Rudolf, and Barry Pierce.

“It’s a small community,” said Daugherty of the diesel mechanic world. “A lot of these folks know each other.”

Daugherty and Cables, who work together, both told Cowboy State Daily they search specifically for small-business techs with non-notable or zero criminal history who have been convicted of Clean Air Act violations under an interpretation that they call invalid.

The Biden administration invoked a statute long used to prosecute people for tampering with big stationary emissions monitoring systems – such as on a chemical plant – to charge people who’d tweaked or reprogrammed trucks’ computers instead.

The Trump administration withdrew from that interpretation earlier this year, and told the U.S. Department of Justice to stop charging delete mechanics criminally. Civil penalties may still apply.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge always loved diesel pickup trucks."}]

He told Cowboy State Daily he started tinkering with diesel engines because his first vehicle was a Ford with a six-liter Power Stroke engine. He learned to tune it at age 17, which would have been in about 2004.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was hooked."}]

In June 2007, at age 20, he started his own repair business, Spartan Diesel Technologies, in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

One year later, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to the stock engines.  

Expensive, recurring repair jobs limped into Geouge’s business, he recalled.

“Small business owners, farmers, emergency service people, hot shot haulers that had these trucks – these were failing left and right,” said Geouge. “They were defective from the moment they rolled off the assembly line.”

Geoge helped by installing alternative software – a process called “tuning.”

Back then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn’t pursue criminal charges against delete and tune mechanics who worked around emissions systems.

Emissions systems grew more complex and expansive. Trucks kept breaking down, Geouge said. Looking back, he said, the timing was “both great and terrible.”

He got into diesel work because it was fun. But problems from what he called volatile and problematic emissions systems found him.  

“It wasn’t where I expected the business to go. But it went there out of necessity,” Geouge said.

In 2013 the EPA filed a civil case against him, which continued for about a year and a half.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was incredibly expensive,” said Geouge."}]

 A notice of violation hit him in 2015. Spartan Diesel shut down in 2017.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of North Carolina charged Geouge in 2021 with two felonies: conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and another charge of tax evasion.

Geouge maintains he did not commit tax evasion. He and Cables both cast that charge as a leverage move by prosecutors to get him to plead guilty.

“That was great evidence of weaponization,” Cables said. “I think the U.S. Attorneys will use whatever leverage they can to bully people into taking a plea deal.”

Cables said the “tax evasion” comprised past-due IRS obligations – normally something that would prompt a repayment plan or civil penalty.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge said it was fallout from his business going broke."}]

“They also threatened to charge his fiancée with felonies for aiding and abetting and tax evasion to get Matt to plead guilty to the felonies,” said Cables.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge did plead guilty, in early 2022."}]

He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He was also fined about $2.5 million, he said Monday.

One month before his June 2022 sentencing hearing, Geouge’s and his fiancée, Caroline, learned that she was pregnant, Geouge recalled.

He checked into prison at USP Lee, Virginia, July 28, and prepared to miss his baby’s birth.

But at the end of August 2022, Geouge’s body went into diabetic ketoacidosis and he was hospitalized in intensive care for eight days, he said.

After the medical incident he returned to prison and learned there how to use insulin. He was 35.

Geouge was released to home confinement on Dec. 13, 2022. Forty-three days later, his son was born.

[{"type":"text","text":"The fallout from being a convicted felon brought surprises."}]

Geouge went to start a new business with a colleague once he was out of prison, and found banks were hesitant to work with him. Unable to possess firearms, he also lost his gun-building business, which he had run out of Spartan Diesel while the shop still lived.

Ryan LaLone had a similar experience, he told Cowboy State Daily in his own interview Monday.

He lives in northern Michigan. Hunting affinity runs in his blood, he said.

“And I think I’ve voted in every election since I’ve been able to vote. I’m proud to be an American; I want to vote,” said LaLone.

He said he walked into a bank with an 810 credit score after his conviction, hoping to buy a camper.

[{"type":"text","text":"“And they were like, well, but you’ve got a felony,” LaLone said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge’s shop wasn’t raided."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ryan LaLone’s was, on Nov. 2, 2018, he said."}]

“Probably 30 agents, I mean, guns blazing, riot gear, I mean you’d have thought we were cooking meth in there. It was unreal,” LaLone said.

That got his small hometown of Gaylord, Michigan, stirring, he recalled. The reputational hit hurt his shop, Diesel Freak, as did the criminal case, he said.

LaLone started his shop in 2007 in Gaylord – a small, conservative-leaning town. His brother Wade came to work for him in 2012, LaLone said.  

Ryan said his goal was “just keep the trucks running. We didn’t blow smoke. We weren’t into this crazy stuff you see on the internet.” He said the Michigan Department of Transportation hired him one spring to repair striper trucks for the short work season.

But the criminal case didn’t start until after Trump’s first administration ended.

That’s a similar account to Lake. His wife, Holly, told Cowboy State Daily in an interview last year that the investigators essentially vanished after federal agents raided their shop – which was then in northern Colorado – in late 2018.

Pressure from the federal prosecutor’s office mounted in the autumn of 2022 and LaLone was formally charged April 26, 2023, with one count of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and two counts of violating it – all felonies.

LaLone said his attorney told him Vice President Kamala Harris had made such violations a priority, and that it was futile to fight. He took a plea deal as soon as his charge surfaced publicly.

LaLone didn’t do time in prison. He said he was offered the choice between prison or a hefty fine and took the fine: $750,000 for his business and $7,500 for him.

[{"type":"text","text":"Voided Warranty Tuning"}]

Achtemeier learned how to tune a vehicle, meaning reprogram its on-board diagnostic system, remotely.

He told Cowboy State Daily that he started reconfiguring diesel systems to ignore emissions flags because some of the emissions sensors and parts shot to eight times their normal price during COVID, or became unavailable. Tractors stalled in the field during harvest time, he said. 

Through his shop Voided Warranty Tuning he gained a national following as an expert engine tuner and the nickname “diesel engine software god,” says a prosecutor’s Feb. 7, 2025, filing urging a judge to give him a harsher sentence, in part because of his sophistication in the trade.

In late 2025, Achtemeier spent four months in federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky, and was fined $25,000.

It could have been worse. His original charges called for up to 31 years in prison and potentially millions in fines.

He shuttered his diesel shop Voided Warranty Tuning years before his criminal prosecution started. He’d taken to driving a truck instead.

Achtemeier was still on supervised release until Friday, when he got news of his pardon. He cared for his horses, and cleaned out their stalls, in an unprecedented heat wave Friday afternoon, he told Cowboy State Daily. Then he collapsed onto the couch, sat with his dogs, and nodded off.

[{"type":"text","text":"The phone rang."}]

“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was spam,” said Achtemeier.

It was the White House. Achtemeier struggled to rationalize what the person was saying.

“It’s still kind of surreal, you know?” he said Monday. He said he never expected to be pardoned, adding, “I’m just some small-town guy.”

Like LaLone, Geouge and Lake, Achtemeier described his lost gun and civic rights as dear to him. He lives in New Jersey, but explains his rural environment as, “We’re in a big farm area. ‘Friday The 13th’ New Jersey not ‘Sopranos’ New Jersey.”

He’s from the West Coast, and was charged in the federal U.S. District Court for western Washington in March 2024.

While on probation he couldn’t leave the state, which makes it “hard to do oversized trucking.”

Achtemeier said he had filed his pardon request paperwork for himself. He said he’s unaware of anyone advocating for him but grateful if someone did.

Still, Achtemeier said he was inspired by Lake – whom he and others cast as a celebrity of the diesel tech world.

Without Lake and another mechanic and activist, Kory Willis, “I don’t think this would have happened,” said Achtemeier.

“Troy put a spotlight on how bad these (prosecutions) were,” he said. “I’m just thankful for Trump seeing this, and thankful for anybody that directly or indirectly made this happen.”

Each of the mechanics who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Monday said they understand the air cleanliness objective. But the manufacturers’ emissions systems, which cripple small businesses, are a heartless way to chase it, they said.

“It’s not an either/or situation,” said Geouge. “Automotive technology has gotten to the point where the electronic controls are so accurate, you can have a clean-running truck without these excessive, unreliable, and expensive components bolted all over it.”

Cables echoed the mechanics’ gratitude, saying, “We are very thankful that the Trump administration is taking an interest in our cases and we are very thankful to President Trump for granting these pardons.”

The president, said Cables, “is rightfully spending his time and attention on these domestic issues, like the emissions weaponization cases.”

Troy Lake and Trump 7 6 26

<title>Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Wyoming's most famous diesel “delete" mechanic Troy Lake, who was pardoned by Trump after a prison stint, advocated for the president to pardon at least six more. On Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.

Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

A controversial flood mitigation effort that brought 150-200 goats to graze along Bitter Creek in Rock Springs is on hold, at least for now.

After spending about $200,000 over three grazing sessions since the spring of 2025, the Rock Springs City Council chose not to budget additional money for the project in the coming fiscal year, instead directing funding toward cemetery lighting.

"This will be the last we see goats, at least for the next fiscal year of operations," Councilman Dan Pedri told Cowboy State Daily.

The decision at least temporarily halts a program that has generated equal parts criticism and curiosity.

Some residents questioned whether taxpayers should spend tens of thousands of dollars to have goats eat weeds. Others regularly stopped to watch the herd quietly graze along Bitter Creek.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"It's a little source of entertainment,\" Pedri said."}]

During the latest grazing session, which began April 1 and ended June 30, the goats removed roughly 35 tons of vegetation, according to mayor Max Mickelson.

“This does not meet the creeks are ‘fixed',” he said. “It means one more piece of the long-term flood mitigation work was completed.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Different Approach"}]

Rock Springs has struggled with periodic flooding for decades, Mickelson said, dating to alterations made to the creek channel by the former Union Pacific Coal Company.

"The goal was simple," Mickelson said of the Bitter Creek project. "Reduce noxious weeds, brush and fuel load along the creek corridors so water can flow more freely, fire risk is reduced, and our intermittent creek system is in better condition before the next major storm event.

"Our broader work is about protecting homes, businesses, infrastructure and development opportunities from recurring floodplain impacts."

The city brought in goats in the spring of 2025 on a trial basis, paying a Cheyenne operation $50,000. Mickelson said the goats “performed better than expected.”

Council member Randy Hanson had asked the council to look into goats, pointing to other Wyoming communities such as Cheyenne and Gillette that were using them successfully for targeted grazing.

[{"type":"text","text":"“We aren’t pioneers of this process by any means,” Pedri said."}]

Farson land and livestock owner Josh Skorcz caught wind of the project “through the Rock Springs grapevine” and pitched himself as a local solution to the flood-risk problem.

[{"type":"text","text":"Skorcz was the only person who bid."}]

“I provide a service,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “I saw an opportunity where we could supply a service to a local entity that needed it.”

In the fall of 2025, the city paid $58,000 to Skorcz’s LS 5 Livestock for eight weeks.

Then, in April, the Rock Springs City Council voted 6-2 to use goats for a third year for $92,000 – a 59% cost increase.

The increase was largely due to more acreage and longer duration, Skorcz said.

"The city did not pay $34,000 more for the same amount of work," Mickelson said. "The scope, timing, staffing and logistical burden increased in relation to the scope of the project."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why Goats?"}]

Skorcz said goats can reach steep, brush-choked areas where heavy equipment struggles to operate, reducing vegetation that can create debris dams during high-water events.

[{"type":"text","text":"The work, however, is labor intensive."}]

Under the city's contract, the herd had to be supervised around the clock. Workers also installed and repeatedly moved roughly 10,000 feet of portable electric fencing by hand.

"We're trying to see that incremental decrease over time of the amount of noxious weeds and thick vegetation," Skorcz said. "You're always going to have vegetation, but the type is what's important."

Mickelson said alternatives such as mechanical removal, herbicides, prescribed burning or major construction each come with significant limitations, permitting requirements or environmental restrictions.

Despite reaching stated goals, the project’s growing price tag remained a sticking point.

Pedri and Councilman Rick Milonas – a vocal critic of Mickelson and a contender for this year’s mayoral seat – voted against approving this year's $92,000 contract, saying many constituents questioned the expense.

"That's why I opted not to do it," Pedri said. "My vote was based on the constituents that reached out to me and my promise to be the voice of the majority."

The cumulative cost — roughly $200,000 over three projects — has also become an issue in the mayoral race.

Candidate Katherine Phelps has repeatedly criticized the program on social media. She did not respond to Cowboy State Daily's request for comment.

[{"type":"text","text":"Pedri said the debate ultimately came down to competing priorities."}]

Like many cities, Rock Springs faces a limited budget while weighing other costly needs, including long-term repairs to its civic center.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Could The Goats Return?"}]

Although the goats won't return next year, Mickelson said the city is awaiting a vegetation study from LS 5 Livestock evaluating the project's effectiveness.

That report will help determine whether targeted grazing is included in future budgets after the 2027 fiscal year.

"We intend to make it an annual tool," Mickelson said, "based on council deciding to allocate funds for it."

[{"type":"text","text":"He acknowledged the program's cost can be difficult to justify."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"Nobody likes spending $92,000,\" he said."}]

But he said he believes prevention is ultimately less expensive than recovering from flood damage.

"A community pays one way or another," Mickelson said. "We can pay in steady, boring maintenance before the storm, or we can pay in emergency response, damaged property and regret after it.

"I would much rather answer hard questions about prevention today than stand in front of flooded homes and explain why we didn't use a cost-effective tool we had available."

For now, the city will continue monitoring the Bitter Creek corridor. If conditions create an immediate flood or fire risk, Mickelson said, the council could consider a future budget amendment.

Hungry goats 1 7 6 26

<title>Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

After spending about $200,000 in goat grazing for flood mitigation since 2025, the town of Rock Springs is putting an end to it for now. One council member said residents say it’s too expensive. "This will be the last we see goats,” he said.

Rock Springs Ends Controversial Goat Grazing Program After Spending $200,000

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

A Fourth of July fundraiser concert at a Gillette bar had ended, the music was over and patrons were beginning to head home when a firework exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off one man’s hand and injuring four other people.

"I tried to light a firework and throw it, it blew up instantly," Matthew Lynch said in a public apology he issued Monday about the mishap. "People got hurt and I feel like total shit for it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’m sorry for being wreckless (sic) and injuring anyone.\""}]

The explosion happened around midnight early Saturday outside the Otherside Bar & Grill, where a concert raising money for a reproductive health clinic had wrapped up about 30 minutes earlier.

"I almost bled out and got life flighted to Billings,” Lynch wrote in his apology posted to Facebook. "I'm gonna be fine. I'm back home. I'm positive and feel OK, other than immense pain."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bleeding Profusely"}]

Otherside Bar & Grill owner Chris Ingersoll described the scene to Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

"There was a gentleman with an arm injury bleeding profusely,” he said.

Ingersoll said someone — possibly one of his bartenders — applied a tourniquet before first responders arrived. 

Police officers were only about a block away and reached the scene within minutes to begin rendering aid, he said.

Ingersoll said he believes a man who had come over from another nearby bar ignited what appeared to be a large firecracker near the front entrance.

Surveillance cameras captured the incident, and the video has been turned over to investigators, he said.

Lynch also wrote that he lost all the fingers on his right hand, shattered the bones in his left hand, suffered burns, hearing damage and partial blindness.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Investigation Ongoing"}]

Gillette Police Department Interim Chief Brent Wasson said the incident remains under investigation and no tickets or arrests have been made.

He also pushed back on early reports that the firework had been "launched" from the man's hand.

"There were no launching of fireworks," Wasson told Cowboy State Daily, cautioning against relying on initial reports while investigators continue determining exactly what happened.

[{"type":"text","text":"Whether alcohol played a role remains unknown, he said."}]

According to Wasson, the person who was handling the firework suffered the most serious injuries and was transported by ambulance to the emergency room at Campbell County Health.

Two additional people were taken by ambulance but declined treatment at the hospital, while two others refused transport at the scene.

Ingersoll said he believed the man who was holding the explosive was out of the hospital and back in Gillette, which Lynch confirmed.

[{"type":"text","text":"Messages left for Lynch weren’t returned by publication."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Explosion, Not Fire"}]

Campbell County Fire Department Battalion Chief Cam Siplon said firefighters were dispatched to the bar for a report of an explosion.

By the time crews arrived, the Gillette Police Department and EMS personnel were already treating patients, he said. Firefighters found no fire or smoke, only a crowd gathered in the parking lot.

Based on the severity of the injuries, Siplon said he would expect the firework was something larger than a typical firecracker, although he emphasized that was not an official determination.

He also could not confirm who applied the tourniquet because EMS had already begun treating the injured man when firefighters arrived.

Siplon urged people to leave fireworks to professionals, noting that serious injuries are more common than many people realize.

"Our best bet is that fireworks should be left to the professionals," he said. "They tend to be better anyway, and not as many people get hurt that way.”

Otherside bar and grill gillette 7 6 26

<title>Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. In a public apology, the man, who was life-flighted to Billings, said he tried to throw the firework "but it blew up instantly."

Gillette Man Blows Fingers Off Hand With Firework Outside Bar, Four Others Hurt

A Glenrock family's Fourth of July celebration ended in chaos when a firework exploded in the middle of a crowd of spectators, seriously injuring a young boy and prompting an emergency helicopter flight to a Denver hospital.

Now, the boy's family is pleading for witnesses to come forward as they search for answers about what happened.

"Accident or not, we want to know the truth” the boy’s mother, Katrina Pergande, said in a Sunday post shared to a Glenrock community Facebook page.

On Monday, the mother told Cowboy State Daily she also wants to make people more aware of how careless people can be when it comes to fireworks.  

Pergande said her family was attending the annual Fourth of July fireworks celebration at the South Recreation Complex at around 9:30 p.m. Friday when a firework entered the area where they were gathered.

She said multiple members of her family, including herself and several of her children, suffered burns. 

Bu her son Lavon sustained the most serious injuries after the firework struck his eye and exploded.

He was transported by ambulance from Glenrock to Casper before being airlifted to Children's Hospital Colorado in Denver, she said.

"His end of the Fourth was cut short and had to be rushed to the hospital," Pergande wrote.

In Glenrock, the town doesn’t put on an organized, professional fireworks show. Instead, the fire department holds a fireworks event at the ball fields allowing people to set off their own.

Admission is $10 per car with a cap at 400 cars. No alcohol is allowed as well.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Eyewitness Describes Chaos"}]

A Glenrock boy was airlifted to a Denver hospital on the Fourth of July after getting hit in the eye with an errant firework when it exploded in a crowd at a local park. A witness said he watched it "explode in the middle of the crowd of people.”

Daily Smile: Wednesday, May 8, 2024

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