It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming, for Tuesday, October 1st. I’m Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - brought to you by the Cowboy State Daily Morning Show with Jake! From 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Monday through Friday, Cowboy State Daily’s Jake Nichols brings to life the latest news, weather, sports and in-depth conversations that matter to you.
Residents of Dayton woke up Monday morning to what some described as an apocalyptic scene. Billowing smoke blotted out the sky, created by what’s been named the Elk Fire, which is burning a few miles northwest of the small town in northern Sheridan County.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that Dayton’s school was closed Monday morning out of an abundance of caution, and some locals were already packing up their things, just in case they need to evacuate.
“Ready, set, go is kind of Wyoming's model, where set means be ready to leave on a moment's notice. So there are quite a few homes in that area that are in the set mode. Dayton is not in that category yet, but a lot of the residents see these huge plumes of smoke. It's only three to five miles away, and they've already started packing up just in case the fire doesn't change direction… it's really grown fast. It went from 27 acres to like over 6700 overnight… and then Monday morning it was reported as 22,000 so all that over a weekend.”
Read the full story HERE.
Meanwhile, residents near the historic Brooks Lake Lodge in the Bridger-Teton National Forest, although weary from battling the stubborn 25,000 acre Fish Creek Fire all summer, are on alert once again.
Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that wind picked up speed over the weekend, breathing life into the Pack Trail Fire that began Sept. 15.
“Over the weekend, this high Wyoming wind found an area where a lightning strike had hit deep in some timbered area that's very inaccessible and just basically overnight, suddenly the Pack Trail fire roared into life, consumed like almost 20,000 acres as of Monday morning. Brooks Lake Lodge is under new evacuation orders, along with Lava Mountain Lodge, the KOA campground, a couple of ranches in the area.”
The complex incident management team that had been managing the Brooks Lake Lodge fire protection plan as well as the Fish Creek Fire has rotated out and a new Type 3 Incident Management Team has rotated in.
Read the full story HERE.
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Allowing people to run over wolves and other predators with snowmobiles makes Wyoming look barbaric. That’s what protesters of the practice told state legislators Monday at the Capitol.
Even so, Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that the Wyoming Legislature’s Joint Travel, Recreation, Wildlife & Cultural Resources Committee voted to forward a bill that will allow that to continue.
“They've come up with a bill that - it does not ban the practice of running predatory animals down with a snowmobile or any other vehicle, but it stipulates that if you're going to do that, you have to make every reasonable effort to kill the animal as quickly as possible. If you don't do that, this bill would it could be convicted as cruelty to animals, you could face up to $1,000 fine and or six months in jail, and then also an amendment that was just added today, you could possibly lose hunting and fishing privileges for up to three years for doing that.”
HThe bill, and the objections against it, are the latest in the continuing ripple effects of the reported capture, torture and killing of a wolf in Daniel, Wyoming in February.
Read the full story HERE.
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Natrona County Schools and Casper Police Department officials Monday were trying to ease fears and frustrations from residents and parents about an online threat over the weekend that a student allegedly planned to kill people at noon Monday.
Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that a screenshot of the online threat was posted anonymously to a social media group, and said that a particular student was threatening multiple people and children’s lives on September 30th at 12.
“Parents had all kinds of concerns. There were concerns about, you know, not sending their kids to school. There was concerns from parents that they were not communicated with, that they learned about it on the police department Facebook page, there was concerns just about the ongoing violence among young teens.”
The threat follows ongoing concerns related to young people being violent with weapons, including two murders earlier this year committed outside of school but all involving Natrona County School District students.
Read the full story HERE.
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A former police detective who accused the Riverton Police Department of harboring a hostile work environment and racist tendencies has settled a federal lawsuit he filed in April.
Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the lawsuit was filed against the agency and city of Riverton by Billy Whiteplume, the first enrolled Northern Arapaho Tribal member to become a Riverton police officer.
“He ascended through the ranks to become detective, but then he started to clash with his supervisors and others in the department, and he has since alleged that the department fostered hostile workplace tendencies and racially discriminatory tendencies. And you know, while the department denied those claims, the department and white plume and potentially the city too, which was also named on the suit, have settled.”
The terms of his settlement have not yet been released to the public.
Read the full story HERE.
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The couple who set a new Utah state record with a humongous 2,289-pound pumpkin this weekend may have a Wyoming pumpkin-growing virtuoso to thank for it.
The seed Ralph and Launa Laub used to grow their gargantuan gourd came from Andy Corbin, a Cheyenne pumpkin grower who set Wyoming’s state record last October when he showed up to a weigh-in with a 2,062-pounder. That’s according to Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi.
“The pumpkin community is pretty small. I mean, people who grow giant pumpkins, there aren't a lot of them, and they all know each other, and they all try to help each other out. But I think it's saying something that the state record holder in the state of Utah was grown from a seed from a Wyoming pumpkin. That's showing that Wyoming's got what it takes to grow these massive pumpkins, and we'll see a lot bigger ones in the future.”
The Wyoming State Champion Pumpkin Weigh-Off will be underway at the Washakie County Fairgrounds in Worland on Saturday.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 19-year-old Cheyenne man was sentenced Monday to five to seven years in prison for shooting his brother’s killer in the foot and brandishing a firearm toward a woman who was in his way.
Leandro Dominguez was originally charged with attempted first-degree murder and three assault charges. But Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that after striking a plea agreement with the Laramie County District Attorney’s Office, he agreed to plead guilty to two aggravated assault charges.
“He has no criminal history. You know, he stayed out of trouble… Judge Cooley indicated, like your character and your history do not match this crime… And then his defense attorney Devin Peterson said this was just a bizarre confluence of incidents culminating in this trauma where he watched his brother get shot. The shooting was determined justified by James Scully, but he watched his brother get shot. He goes and gets the gun. He returns to the scene, he charges and he fires at the shooter's foot. So it's it's kind of trauma upon trauma here in what was defined in court as youths escalating things.”
If Dominguez completes the youthful offender program, he can return to the court and ask for a reduction on the remainder of his sentence. He also gets credit for the 229 days he’s spent in jail during his prosecution.
Read the full story HERE.
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Archery hunter Landon Clement of Georgia told Cowboy State Daily that his Glock 10 mm pistol jammed twice during a grizzly attack in the remote Upper Green River Basin.
Several factors could have caused the hunter’s pistol to jam during the attack early Thursday, but outdoors reporter Mark Heinz spoke to gun experts who say Clement still performed well under terrifying pressure.
“Maybe the type of ammunition the pistol didn't really like it all that much and wasn't cycling it very well, or even the way you hold a pistol if you don't hold it, if you don't have a good enough grip and enough resistance against the palm of your hand, it'll fail to cycle the action. So we don't know for sure why that pistol jammed.”
Whether semiautomatic pistols or magnum-caliber revolvers are better for bear defense is a debate that might never be settled. Revolvers are generally considered to be less prone to failure, but semiautomatics have a higher ammunition capacity.
Read the full story HERE.
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Nathan Frederick had just put $700 into fixing up a used truck for his DoorDash delivery job when something completely unexpected happened - his vehicle caught on fire.
But Wyoming is a special place. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that before emergency vehicles could respond, passersby had taken action.
“I was on my way home Sunday, and I got up to the Hat Six exit, just past Casper… and as I approach, I see this guy. He's like, running around his truck, and he's like, making phone calls… Then I noticed fire coming out from underneath the hood, so I pulled up and around on the other side… and came back, you know, to see if he needed any help. And the next thing I knew, he was like flooded with Wyomingites who were passing him fire extinguishers and jugs of water and helping him put out this fire that had started in his truck.”
Frederick said that times like these make newcomers like him glad they live in Wyoming, where there’s always a cowboy or two willing to go an extra mile to help a stranger in need.
Read the full story HERE.
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And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on Cowboy State Daily Dot Com - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our YouTube channel. I’m Wendy Corr, for Cowboy State Daily.
