One More For The Road

Protestor Darwin tries to block traffic, instantly gets what she deserves.....

Darwin 6 27 24

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

<title>One More For The Road: Thursday, June 27, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

One More For The Road: Thursday, June 27, 2024

 Protestor Darwin tries to block traffic, instantly gets what she deserves.....

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's managing editor, Greg Johnson.

Greg Johnson

Crime & Courts

CHEYENNE — For those wondering how a dog could pull off shooting a woman with a shotgun while stopped for gas in Nebraska, the answer is simple — it pulled the trigger.

That’s the only way a loaded, properly functioning shotgun could go off, said Arthur Huckfeldt and Ryan Allen at Frontier Arms and Supply in Cheyenne.

[{"type":"text","text":"Simply bumping or jostling a shotgun won’t set it off, said Huckfeldt."}]

“That’s impossible. The trigger has to be manipulated,” he told Cowboy State Daily on Wednesday while demonstrating with a shotgun in the East Lincolnway gun shop.

If someone were to say their shotgun went off because it was knocked over or kicked around by a dog, “that someone is lying out their ass,” he added. “That wouldn’t do it.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Heard A Shotgun Blast’"}]

Huckfeldt and Allen, who owns the shop, were weighing in on the question people are asking after a Saturday incident when a dog shifting in the back seat of a truck parked at a convenience store fired a loaded shotgun.

The blast put a hole through the front passenger door of the truck, and a single pellet traveled to a nearby intersection, hitting a woman in a car parked at a stoplight.

“The owner of the truck had pulled into the convenience store to purchase merchandise,” says the Scottsbluff Police Department in a statement about the incident.

“While the passenger of the truck was standing near the front passenger side door, a dog in the back seat moved from one side of the vehicle to the other,” the statement says. “During that movement, the dog triggered a shotgun that had a live shell in the chamber, causing the firearm to discharge.”

Craig Grass owns the Short Stop gas station and convenience store, and was working when the dog fired the shotgun. He told Cowboy State Daily that he heard the blast and knew right away what it was.

“The people (who came in the truck) were in the store shopping and the wife went outside,” he said. “They thought they heard a shotgun blast, but nobody really knew for sure. Then they saw the door had a hole in it.”

The blast through the door was toward the gas pumps, Grass said, adding that he wasn’t worried pellets from the shotgun would touch off an explosion.

“The pumps are safe and really well-built,” he said. “It’s not like in the movies where you touch it and it blows up. There’s a lot of safety built into those pumps, they cost a lot and there wasn’t really any danger.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"‘Put It In The Case’"}]

While answering how a dog can fire a shotgun is easy — pull the trigger, remember? — there are a lot of missing variables in the Nebraska scenario, both Huckfeldt and Allen said.

The Scottsbluff Police Department didn’t respond to a Cowboy State Daily request for more information, like the breed and size of the dog, model of the shotgun, and whether the gun had a safety that was activated.

While they have no clue about those first two nuggets of information, Huckfeldt and Allen both said if the safety was on, the gun wouldn’t have gone off.

“If a 60-pound dog engaged with that trigger, it’d go off, like if it catches a claw or pad in that trigger guard,” Allen said.

[{"type":"text","text":"It would only take about 3-5 pounds of pressure, added Huckfeldt."}]

Even then, “I would think it would be really hard for a dog to shoot a shotgun,” he said. “The dog would have to have a small (paw) pad, unless it was a small dog. But that’s just a lot of conjecture.”

Both agree that what happened Saturday at the Short Stop in Scottsbluff was “very unusual.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“But Nebraska’s weird,” Huckfeldt added."}]

While it’s fun to joke about a dog shooting a shotgun, it’s only so because nobody was seriously hurt. One thing the Cheyenne gun experts said they know for sure is that if the shotgun had been stored properly in the back seat of the truck, it wouldn’t have fired.

“If you have firearms, they should be secured, put it in the case or in a rack,” Allen said. “Not haphazardly lying around in the back seat.”

He said the lesson here is, “Don’t be a dum-dum, or as my dad would say, don’t be a shithead.”

Shotgun pressure Frontier Arms and Supply 5 27 26

<title>How Did A Dog Shoot A Woman With A Shotgun At A Nebraska Convenience Store? | Cowboy State Daily</title>

For those wondering how a dog shot a woman with a shotgun in Nebraska this past weekend, gun experts say it pulled the trigger. If someone says the shotgun went off because it was knocked over or kicked around by a dog, they are "lying out their ass."

How Did A Dog Shoot A Woman With A Shotgun At A Nebraska Convenience Store?

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

Clair McFarland

Law Enforcement

A Cheyenne-based church, barbershop and advocacy group have filed a legal challenge against Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak, claiming the sheriff bypassed the public process 

 three agreements, “unilaterally,” with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

American Civil Liberties Union attorney Andrew Malone filed the challenge Tuesday in the Laramie County District Court for Wyoming, along with local attorney Elizabeth B. Lance, on behalf of Juntos, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne, and Drew’s Barbershop.

The complaint asks for “declaratory judgment” against Kozak, meaning the plaintiffs want the court to say that they’re correct under the law and Kozak is wrong. 

It also asks the court to hold Kozak’s three agreements with ICE as unlawful and block them permanently, as well as grant “any other relief that the Court deems just and equitable.”

Kozak’s office has three agreements with ICE, which the agencies call 287(g) agreements. 

One lets jail officials investigate inmates for potential immigration violations. Another lets the sheriff’s deputies act as immigration task force agents and investigate federal immigration violations while they’re out enforcing laws. And another lets the Laramie County Detention Center house detainees for ICE.

Kozak signed all three agreements last May, the complaint says. His agency has 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Truck Around"}]

The sheriff’s office grabbed headlines in April when it announced it had caught 46 illegal commercial truck drivers in its latest “

And in April, the sheriff’s office logged the greatest number of immigration arrests in the country of any local or state law enforcement agency, the complaint relates from a 

The ACLU’s complaint says Kozak didn’t submit these agreements to the Laramie County Clerk or get written permission from the Laramie County Commission to enter them or spend money on them. It says state law requires both.

“The Laramie County Board of Commissioners never debated, voted on, adopted a resolution, passed a resolution, or otherwise officially sanctioned Sheriff Kozak’s decision to enter any of the three 287(g) agreements or to incur the expenses associated with the agreements,” says the complaint, adding that Kozak’s office spent about $75,000 on immigration expenses from Sept. 1, 2025, to Jan. 31, 2026.

It also says Kozak bypassed the Wyoming Administrative Procedures Act, which requires agencies to give the public 45 days’ notice of substantive rules changes, and must afford any group of 25 or more people the opportunity to hold a hearing on those changes.  

“Wyoming sheriffs do not have limitless authority,” the complaint says.

Cowboy State Daily left Kozak a voicemail Wednesday and will update this 

[{"type":"text","text":"ICE did not immediately respond to a Wednesday morning email inquiry."}]

Laramie County Clerk Debra Lee confirmed in a Wednesday phone call that, “We have no agreements that have been submitted for 287(g) agreements to our office, or on file with our office.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Barber Deported To Nicaragua"}]

Drew’s barbershop lost an employee because Laramie County Sheriff’s Office deputies worked together with ICE to deport the employee to Nicaragua, the lawsuit says.

” Carlos Montes had been working at Drew’s Barbershop for six months when a Laramie County Sheriff’s deputy pulled him over for an inoperable headlight, the complaint says. 

It adds that the deputy then used the authority one of the three ICE agreements reportedly conferred to arrest Montes over his immigration status.

The document says Montes lacked a criminal history, and that his partner was pregnant at the time.

His family and employer navigated “confusing and contradictory information” to find him, the lawsuit alleges, and they eventually learned he’d been deported to Nicaragua.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Juntos"}]

The complaint says Juntos, a nonprofit group that advocates for immigrants and marginalized communities, was cheated of the chance to comment ahead of the three contracts’ adoption, and that it’s had to adjust its activities and budgeting because of them.

“Juntos has begun to host events online rather than in person in response to the community’s fear of being detained under the 287(g) agreements while traveling to or attending these events,” says the complaint. “This prevents the organization from creating the kind of connections and relationships with community members that require face-to-face interactions.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Church"}]

The complaint says the Unitarian Universalist Church of Cheyenne has had to redirect $4,000 of its charity money and $6,000 in food and supplies to support people impacted by the sheriff’s agreements. 

The church formed the Friends of Immigrants Responding Ethically (FIRE) ministry for this cause, the document says.

All three plaintiffs allege they would have participated in the public process for adopting the agreements, had one unfolded.

Kozak and deputies ICE 5 27 26

<title>ACLU Helps Church, Nonprofit Group Sue Laramie County Sheriff Over ICE Agreements | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The ACLU is helping a Cheyenne-based church, barbershop and nonprofit group sue Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak over his three agreements with ICE. “Wyoming sheriffs do not have limitless authority,” the complaint says.

ACLU Helps Church, Nonprofit Group Sue Laramie County Sheriff Over ICE Agreements

Courts

A local woman is suing the Green River Police Department and Wyoming Department of Family Services officials on claims she 

 a malicious child abuse prosecution last year. She was arrested for DUI one day before her lawsuit was filed. 

 to wake her 5-year-old sister Annabelle, who lay on their babysitter's couch in Kemmerer with her pulse fading after a brutal beating.

Annabelle died hours later from injuries the girls’ babysitter, Cheri Marler, inflicted on her with her hands, feet, and a wooden spoon.

 more than a year later, and a judge sentenced Marler to life in prison without parole.

Investigators at the time observed numerous injuries on the 4-year-old as well, court documents say. 

 with her foster mother Vallory Dodson, and Dodson’s husband.

[{"type":"text","text":"Dodson was not involved in the Kemmerer incident. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Bruises And A Black Eye"}]

An evidentiary affidavit filed in December 2024 in Sweetwater County Circuit Court says the girl’s teacher in Green River voiced concerns that autumn about bruises, a black eye covered with thick makeup, and a broken arm sustained by the then-kindergarten-age girl.

The girl told Green River Police Department Detective Martha Holzgrafe that November that she’d tripped while walking. She also said she’d been hurt 

pushed on the playground, the affidavit says.

About five weeks later, the girl gave Holzgrafe another interview and said Dodson had grabbed her by the ribs and thrown her to the ground. 

By then, says a court filing from Dodson's counsel, the state had placed the girl in her teacher's home. 

Sweetwater County Chief Criminal Deputy Attorney Micaela Lira charged Dodson with felony child abuse Dec. 20, 2024, and police arrested Dodson, who was reportedly 

Lira asked the court to dismiss the charge permanently the following June. 

She says she did so to guard against re-traumatizing the child by making her testify. 

“While preparing for trial, the state met with multiple individuals, witnesses, support members for the alleged victim, and the alleged victim herself,” wrote Lira in the June 5, 2025, motion to the Sweetwater County District Court. “

"After consultations with the alleged victim’s current caregivers (I find) any form of testifying in this matter would be detrimental to the 

 of the alleged victim and may (undo) the growth and healing she has 

District Court Judge Suzannah Robinson granted Lira’s request and dismissed the case the next day.

Lira reiterated her point in a Tuesday interview, telling Cowboy State Daily that the girl was emphatic about not testifying, “because if she did, it would bring back all the memories of what happened to her when she lived there.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Sweetwater County Attorney Daniel Erramouspe echoed that."}]

“What we put in the motion is accurate,” he said. “It wasn’t something we did lightly. There are rare occasions where that’s actually the case — where testifying is absolutely worse than what would have happened (otherwise). You know, than getting justice in this particular case.”

The prosecutors filed that motion to dismiss the charge about one year before the Wyoming Legislature passed a law allowing children in cases of violence to testify via a video link and bring comfort objects or a therapy dog into the courtroom with them.  

Now Dodson is suing the city of Green River, the Wyoming Department of Family Services, and various officials, saying authorities undertook her arrest and prosecution without probable cause and violated her rights.

Her civil complaint alleges a counterpoint to Lira’s motion, saying that, at least in DFS’s administrative handling of the incident, the child abuse case against Dodson lacked substance. 

The complaint says investigators didn’t request the girl’s medical records until months after filing the charge, and that multiple doctors opined that the girl’s broken arm was consistent with an injury sustained from falling.

The expert Dodson hired in her own case, Dr. Wade Jensen, reportedly said the break was most consistent with “a fall from a standing height.” 

The complaint says the emergency room doctor who'd tended the girl's broken arm did not report any abuse.  

[{"type":"text","text":"Little Did He Know"}]

Dodson’s attorney Jason Gay filed the civil complaint on her behalf in the U.S. District Court for Wyoming on May 11.

Gay didn’t know at the time, he told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday, that Dodson had been arrested on suspicion of driving drunk with a toddler in her car one day earlier.

“That was a coincidence in timing,” said Gay Tuesday. “The lawsuit had been pending for a while.”

He’d sent the state and the city drafts of the complaint before its filing, and before that arrest, Gay added.

As for the DUI charge, Gay noted that his client is 30, saw her now-dropped child abuse case spread via the media, and after a “long, drawn-out process… ultimately dismissed.”

He pointed to her relative lack of criminal history before the felony case was filed and the media attention followed. 

“And I think you’re seeing the impact that that can have on a person,” Gay added.

Dodson remained in the Sweetwater County Detention Center on a $30,000 bond as of Tuesday, the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office confirmed. Court documents claim she rear-ended a Toyota 4Runner while driving drunk in Rock Springs.

A woman in the 4Runner was temporarily hospitalized, and Dodson at first faced the felony of DUI causing a serious bodily injury – which carries a penalty of up to a decade in prison.

But Lira dropped that charge upon the realization that the victim’s injuries weren't serious enough to carry the charge, court documents say.

Still, Dodson faces three remaining charges of DUI with a child passenger, improperly buckling a child under 9 and following another vehicle too closely.

Dodson pleaded not guilty to those three charges May 20. She could face up to a year in prison and fines if convicted.

The alleged crash happened two days after Dodson pleaded guilty for breach of peace – in a case where she was originally charged in March with domestic battery, on claims she attacked her husband with his wristwatch after an argument about his inability to cook quinoa.

She had received six months' unsupervised probation in that case, with the threat of jail time if she failed probation.  

Dodson’s lawsuit accuses Green River Police Department officials of 

It accuses DFS officials of exacerbating that detention by disregarding evidence that didn’t support “their theory of abuse,” and it accuses investigators from both agencies of advancing a malicious prosecution against Dodson.

It also accuses DFS officials of abuse of process and violating Dodson’s rights.

It accuses officials from both agencies of conspiring against Dodson to interfere with her imminent adoption of the girl.

The civil complaint says Dodson took the 6-year-old girl to the emergency room on Oct. 17, 2024, due to pain in the girl’s right arm.

At that time, the girl had indicated another child at school pulled her arm, the complaint says. Dodson had been the girl’s foster parent and was finalizing her adoption of both that girl and the girl’s other, surviving sister.

The complaint says the doctor diagnosed the girl with an arm fracture. Because Dodson was a foster parent, the doctor reportedly contacted DFS to tell the agency about the diagnosis and gain authorization to perform a surgery on the girl.

One month later, Holzgrafe responded to the elementary school to investigate the girl’s black eye.

The girl said her eye was injured while she was playing with a dog, “and the Wyoming Department of Family Services later confirmed this to be the case,” the document says.

[{"type":"text","text":"School staff also told Holzgrafe about the girl’s October arm injury."}]

Both the girl and Dodson said the girl had injured her arm while walking home from the bus.

“Holzgrafe chose not to preserve the video and it was deleted by the school district,” the complaint alleges.

For a few weeks after the judge dismissed Dodson’s criminal case, Wyoming was still waging administrative child protection proceedings against her, court documents say.

But that ended that August when DFS declared its investigators’ findings “unsubstantiated,” the complaint adds. 

Dodson’s lawsuit accuses six people, all in their official capacities, of wrongdoing, as well as the city of Green River.

[{"type":"text","text":"Those six are:"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"• DFS Director Korin Schmidt"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"• Green River Police Chief Shaun Sturlaugson"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"• DFS social worker Victoria Collett"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"• DFS special investigator Cassie Torres"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"• DFS quality improvement manager Lisa Bauman-Brown."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The case is ongoing. "}]

20240526 green river 2088

<title>Green River Woman Sues Cops, DFS For Malicious Prosecution In Child Abuse Case | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Green River woman is suing police and child protection officials for malicious prosecution. Prosecutors charged her with child abuse, then dismissed the charge seven months later, saying they did not want to re-traumatize the child in court.

Green River Woman Sues Cops, DFS For Malicious Prosecution In Child Abuse Case

Employee kate meadows cropped

Kate Meadows

Government & Politics

Executive

A proposed 12-month moratorium on data centers in Cheyenne was rejected on a 9-1 City Council vote after nearly four hours of emotional, and at times angry, testimony Tuesday night. 

The discussion pitted data center workers happy with good jobs against local residents who are skeptical — and some fearful — of the impacts that rapid data center growth brings to the city. 

About half of those who spoke were in favor of the moratorium with the other half opposing it.

Throughout the marathon debate, Cheyenne Mayor Patrick Collins called for respect from the audience more than once.

“There are two sides to this story,” he said. “Let’s be respectful to both sides.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Union Workers Weigh In"}]

Marcie Kindred, representing Wyoming’s AFLCIO, the state’s labor federation, said a troubling narrative began to emerge after last week’s city planning commission meeting where the moratorium was discussed. 

The city’s Public Service Committee also took up the moratorium during a May 18 meeting and decided 

 on the moratorium either way to the council.

“The community on one side and pro data center big-tech billionaires and unions on the other,” Kindred said.

Union members are also Cheyenne residents, she said, adding they are taxpayers who live here and love Wyoming.

“Our opposition to this moratorium is not a broad endorsement of AI,” she added.

She addressed concerns about artificial intelligence and the threats that data centers pose to workers before saying that fight belongs in Washington, D.C., not in a city council meeting.

Do we want economic development done right, under Wyoming standards, or do we hand it off to someone with a rubber stamp and no safeguards? she asked.

“These workers are here today because they know what a pause really means,” she said about the strong turnout to oppose the moratorium. “It means in a few months they’ll be back out on the road answering the nearest work calls, sleeping in a hotel instead of in their own beds.”

These data center projects have allowed people to put down roots and dream a little, she said, adding that, “A moratorium does not protect our community.”

Matthew Miles introduced himself as a pipefitter from Cheyenne and said most of the men in the union he belongs to he met in South Dakota.

“Until Meta ramped up and brought all of us home, all of these guys were in a completely other state away from their families,” he said. “A moratirum will force these companies to go somewhere else. 

[{"type":"text","text":"\"All it will do it hurt the local workers you see tonight.”"}]

Truett Thompson, president of the Local 415 electrical workers union, said a pause on data centers means a pause on economic growth.

“We believe we’re at a crossroads at the future of our community’s infrastructure,” he said, adding that members of his union are enjoying good-paying jobs because of the local data center buildout.

David Richardson called a moratorium “a stop sign in the road for the middle class.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Paid To Be Here?"}]

Not everyone was convinced the workers represented the broader community.

A Cheyenne resident who identified himself only as Adam clutched a yellow index card with a shaky hand.

“Everyone here who is opposing this moratorium are literally being paid to do so,” he told the council.

Adam added that as soon as the projects are finished, the workers will be gone. He referred to the data center workers as “transient residents,” saying if we had local workers, we would not need a huge proposed 

“The permanent residents by and large do not want these data centers,” he said.

Others countered that the industry has already created long-term local careers.

Shawn Broad, an employee of Microsoft who received training at Microsoft’s data center academy, assured the council he was not paid to be at the council meeting. 

He said he grew up in Cheyenne and immediately left because he didn’t see a future there. A job at Microsoft allowed him to return to his roots, he said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Quality Of Life"}]

For many speakers, the discussion came down to competing visions of Cheyenne’s future and what kind of quality of life residents want to preserve.

Ryan Blue, a Cheyenne resident and data center technician, said that his data center job "financially changed my life.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Your whole life anymore runs on a data center,” he added."}]

Elizabeth Marvin said she fought “tooth and nail” to get back to her home state of Wyoming, yet the Wyoming she moved back to is not the Wyoming she grew up in.

“I brought my kids with me,” Marvin said through tears. “As soon as I got back, I learned that there were data centers going in south of my neighborhood.”

Marvin likened Cheyenne’s data center boom to the uranium mining boom in Jeffrey City, which lasted from the late 1950s through the 1970s.

Jeffrey City grew large enough to support an Olympic-sized swimming pool, Marvin said. “Then, the workers ran away from the radiation.”

Anne Domas didn’t mask her disdain for data centers, and accused the council of being “the pimps prostituting our resources.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Pause Is Not A Stop"}]

Supporters of the moratorium repeatedly emphasized that a moratorium would be temporary, not permanent.

Jimmy Chiro, a candidate for a Ward 1 City Council seat, spoke in favor of the moratorium, saying a one-year pause is not asking a lot.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It’s not going to stop their work,” he said. “It’s a pause.”"}]

Richard Lyle suggested a moratorium won’t slow AI technology and will only drive it offshore.

Several people said their biggest frustration has been what they see as a lack of information and transparency when it comes to data center development.

A 12-month moratorium on data centers in Cheyenne was rejected on a 9-1 City Council vote after hours of emotional, and at times angry, testimony Tuesday night. “The people who put you in your position are terrified,” one resident told the council. 

One More For The Road: Thursday, June 27, 2024

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