A man who was arrested in Cody, Wyoming, on Tuesday on suspicion of killing someone with his car was out on bond prior to his arrest on allegations he fired crossbow bolts onto an airplane runway last November.
Park County authorities responded “swiftly” to a be-on-the-lookout (BOLO) notice out of Carbon County, Montana, at about 3:16 Tuesday afternoon, and by 4:10, officers had conducted a high-risk traffic stop and apprehended the driver on Cody’s Yellowstone Avenue without incident, says a Wednesday statement by the Cody Police Department.
The BOLO suspect was involved in multiple road rage incidents and a hit-and-run crash that killed someone in Montana, the statement adds.
Though the statement doesn’t identify the suspect, Michael Joseph Gambale, by name, his is the only booking file on the Park County Sheriff’s log that aligns with the time and location of the BOLO suspect’s arrest. Montana's Carbon County Sheriff's Office has since confirmed Gambale's identity.
Gambale, 47, was arrested on suspicion of vehicular homicide and for a probation revocation warrant, the Park County jail log says. His bond is set at $100,000.
Police scanner traffic from the time indicated Park County personnel were coordinating with officers as far south as Shoshoni, and monitoring roads in multiple directions.
“Relay to that other agency that he did produce an excited utterance where he said he did veer over and hit a motorcycle,” one agent announced on the scanner after Gambale’s arrest Tuesday.
Montana’s Carbon County Sheriff Josh McQuillen on Wednesday dispatched charging documents, in which Gambale is charged with one count of deliberate homicide and three counts of attempted deliberate homicide.
Deliberate homicide is punishable by life in prison or the death penalty, in Montana.
The charging document accuses Gambale of crashing his car into a motorcycle, killing one person and seriously injuring another. McQuillen said Gambale is suspected of ramming the motorcycle as it traveled highway speeds on Highway 72 south of Belfry, Montana.
Gambale also tried multiple times to crash his car into another motorcycle, hitting the motorcyclist in the leg near Rockvale; and tried multiple times to hit one motorcycle so that he forced it off the road, the document alleges.
McQuillen expects the Gambale to be extradited to Montana, he said.
Ties To Cody
The Cody Police Department statement notes that the BOLO suspect has ties to Cody.
In fact, Gambale had an active criminal case in Cody Circuit Court at the time of his arrest and was out of jail on a mostly-unsecured $2,375 bond the court had set Monday.
Gambale’s bond pertained to his alleged probation revocation in a case where he earlier pleaded no contest to firing crossbow bolt and/or air gun darts onto the runway of Yellowstone Regional Airport last November.
The evidentiary affidavit in that case says that Cody Police Department Officer Thomas Wilshusen responded to the airport the morning of Nov. 6, 2023, to meet with workers who found four bolts on the runway during a routine check.
The bolts appeared somewhere between 4:30 and 7:52 that morning. Four aircraft, including a commercial plane carrying 50 passengers, used the runway before the bolts were discovered, says the affidavit.
The workers noted that two of the bolts had three-blade broadheads attached; two had field point tips attached. The bolts could destroy aircraft tires and cause wrecks, including injuries and deaths, the worker told Wilshusen at the time.
Northward
The officer turned northward to Gambale’s nearby Cody home.
He found four more arrows sticking out of the ground on Gambale’s property abutting the airport’s land, the document says. He also found another bolt on the airport property just past the fence separating the two.
As Wilshusen photographed the arrows, he noticed Gambale, whom he recognized from prior contacts, watching him from within his home, the affidavit says.
Gambale waved then closed his window blinds.
The two tried to talk through Gambale’s open back door, but the wind and distance obscured what Gambale was trying to say. The man went back inside and kept watching Wilshusen, but Wilshusen decided to leave for safety reasons, “because of the close proximity of Gambale’s home and his erratic and agitated actions,” the officer wrote in the affidavit.
Wilshusen met with other agents. They noticed Gambale outside his home, playing his trumpet and pacing the street in a bathrobe, and they decided to arrest him, says the document.
The affidavit says they arrested him without incident, then conducted a safety sweep of Gambale’s home, in which they found more air-gun bolts in plain sight.
The Cody Circuit Court judge approved a search warrant for the home.
When the agents acted on that warrant, they found multiple bolts matching those found on the runway, plus 15 matching broadheads, three air bolt guns, two compound bows and one crossbow.
No Contest
Gambale pleaded no contest to one charge of reckless endangering, which is a misdemeanor, in February of this year. He was sentenced to one year of unsupervised probation with various requirements, including that he not have any dangerous weapons.
If Gambale failed probation, there was a chance he’d have to go to jail for 259 days. He had already spent 101 days in jail during his prosecution, says a Feb. 14 sentencing order.
By Feb. 29, the prosecutor’s office was asking for the court to revoke Gambale’s probation over an allegation that he wasn’t following the court’s rules about getting his prescriptions from the Veteran’s Affairs office.
After further disputes about whether Gambale should be arrested on the violation claim, the court scheduled a probation revocation hearing for Sept. 27.
And the court released Gambale on the mostly unsecured bond Monday. That same day, Gambale emailed authorities a nearly incomprehensible letter claiming he was a victim of religious persecution, his court file shows.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
