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

<title>Daily Cartoon 2: Tuesday, December 3, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Cartoon 2: Tuesday, December 3, 2024

Kerry Drake

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

Cheyenne’s new vehicle noise ordinance was unanimously passed by the City Council to stop obnoxious motorists who drive their loud cars, trucks and motorcycles late at night, disrupting people’s sleep.

 soon after it went on the books in late September was auto mechanic Geno Stecks, who was driving a fairly unassuming 2006 Subaru with a modified muffler. 

It also wasn’t in the middle of the night or in a residential section of the capital city. Stecks said it was on a main thoroughfare at the intersection of East Lincolnway and Hugur Avenue at 2:45 in the afternoon.

“Communists. Control freaks!” is how Stecks responded when asked what he thought about the City Council members who approved the ordinance after many people opposed it during public testimony at three council meetings.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"He Wasn’t Speeding"}]

Stecks was on the job when he got busted, transporting auto parts for FM Automotive when he heard the police siren.

He told the officer that he didn’t think he’d been speeding, but was informed the stop was made because of excessive noise.

This how the encounter went, according to Stecks:

“I couldn’t hear my radio for your exhaust,” the officer told him.

“I said, ‘Turn your volume knob up,’” Stecks said he replied. "I couldn’t hear my exhaust because of my radio, because I’ve got a kick-ass stereo in it.”

In hindsight, Stecks said he’s since though of some other creative responses.

“I wish I had told him, ‘What are you going to tell the Hells Angels if they come roaring through town? Are you going to pull them over and cite them for having too loud exhaust? You probably wouldn’t live through it,’” said the bearded Stecks, wearing a T-shirt that depicted a full mug with the word “Beer – It’s What’s for Dinner.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Few Tickets"}]

A spokesperson for the Cheyenne Police Department said that after Stecks broke the ice as the first to be ticketed for driving too loudly, 43 other motorists were given noise violation citations in 2025, and 33 more so far this year.

Even those are way too few, said a council member who supported the noise ordinance.

“They should be writing 300 or 400,” said City Council Vice President Pete Laybourn. “The problem is immense, and I’m very disappointed with how it’s being handled. The ordinance hasn’t been effective at all.”

Laybourn said residents are purposely modifying their mufflers and making noise in all parts of the city, at all hours day and night, and also deliberately speeding.

“They tried to disrupt Friday Night at the Plaza last week, driving up Capitol (Avenue) and backfiring,” he said. “It was really, really bad.”

City Council President Tom Segrave was one of several councilmen who brought up the issue last summer because ​he was getting so many complaints from Cheyenne residents about excessive noise from motorists.

“I live off Yellowstone Road, and I can tell you it’s quite a sight to see a pack of people riding these loud little motorcycles down Yellowstone at night, often up until 1 a.m., popping wheelies,” Segrave said.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Too Early To Tell"}]

He said it’s too early to know if the ordinance is making a difference. 

Segrave said he hasn’t been receiving complaints, but figures that will change during the summer when more people have their windows open.

The main difference between the new ordinance and a previous one is that it allows a police officer to use his or her judgment about whether a vehicle is too loud. 

The former regulation required a meter to be used at least 25 feet away, which Segrave said made it unenforceable.

Stecks said he paid the $100 fine, which would be increased to $200 if he breaks the ordinance again within a year. 

Possible jail time is on the books for a third offense, plus a $500 fine, but City Attorney John Brodie told Cowboy State Daily when the ordinance was passed last year that it’s 

“If anything, jail is maybe an imposed part of the sentence that would then be suspended,” he said.

“People told me, ‘You could have fought this,’” Steck said. “I said I’d be in worse trouble because I would have ended up in jail after I told the judge and the court how crooked they are. 

"There would have been F-bombs involved. When you’re a mechanic, F-bombs are the terminology of the trade.”

The ordinance requires all vehicles driven within city limits to be equipped with a muffler. It prohibits vehicles that bypass or cut out their mufflers to be louder and those that create “excessive smoke.”

Stecks said he agrees with the idea that people who drive small motorcycles known as “crotch rockets” up and down the street after 10 p.m. need to be ticketed. 

But he emphasized, “Not drivers who are just doing their job in the middle of the day.”

He said it would have made more sense if he’d received a ticket for a machine that he knows is really noisy: a fast 1931 Model A rat rod named “Clyde” that he built several years ago. 

Several of Stecks’ co-workers smiled and nodded their heads as he said this, because they know exactly how loud Clyde can be cranked it up.

Stecks said his main problem with the ordinance is that it relies on a police officer to make a judgment call about how loud the noise is.

“They need to measure it,” he said. “That’s the only way they should ever do this.”

Geno breaks the sound barrier 6 15 26

<title>Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Mechanic Geno Stecks got the first ticket under Cheyenne’s new noise ordinance while delivering a car part in the middle of the day. When the officer told him he couldn't hear his radio because of the exhaust, Stecks said, "Turn your volume knob up."

Meet The First Driver To Get A Ticket Under Cheyenne’s New Noise Ordinance

Heinz mark

Mark Heinz

Outdoors

Wildlife

A pair of young Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep rams that wandered into Cheyenne were killed by game wardens out of concern that they could catch pneumonia from domestic livestock and transmit it back into wild sheep herds.

The rams, thought to be between 1 and 2 years old, were killed last week, Game and Fish spokeswoman Amanda Fry stated in a Monday email to Cowboy State Daily.

Meat from the rams was donated to Wyoming first lady Jennie Gordon’s Food from the Field program through the Wyoming Hunger Initiative.

Bighorn sheep can pick up diseases from domestic stock and spread them back into their herds with devastating effects, according to Game and Fish.

Pneumonia is the disease of greatest concern, Fry said.

“We do not know which area/herd these two came from,” she said. "The closest two wild sheep herds to Cheyenne are west of Scottsbluff, Neb., and in the Iron Mountain area (in southeast Wyoming)."

Biologist and wildlife researcher Jack States lives near a bighorn sheep herd in Sinks Canyon in the Lander area.

He told Cowboy State Daily that he doesn’t agree with the Game and Fish policy of killing bighorns that might have come into contact with domestic sheep or other livestock.

“My opinions are contrary to the current management policy,” he said, although he’s willing to consider whether or not long-term data reveals “that management policy actually works.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Spotted The Day Before"}]

Cheyenne resident Valarie Grace told Cowboy State Daily that she spotted the rams late on June 7 in the yard of her parents’ house on the outskirts of Cheyenne.

“We have no idea where they came from. They took off after we spotted them and they were still going when we last saw them,” she said.

She said that at the time, she was worried that the rams might run out onto Pershing Boulevard and get struck by vehicles.

States said that young bighorn rams can have a propensity to wander, usually because they’re seeking to stake out new territory.

It’s unlikely that the rams were planning to stay in Cheyenne, Fry added.

“Suitable habitat for bighorn sheep tends to be steep, open, higher elevation, rocky slopes,” she said. "While there have been occurrences in the past of young sheep showing up in lower elevation municipalities in southeast Wyoming over the last couple of decades, it is not common.

“These sheep were likely traveling on a stream corridor seeking out suitable habitat and reached Cheyenne city limits."

While bighorn sheep are hardy enough to survive Wyoming’s worst weather in its roughest terrain, they are highly susceptible to disease.

Pneumonia outbreaks, sometimes transmitted from domestic sheep, can be bighorn conservationists’ worst nightmare. In some cases, entire herds are nearly wiped out.

The legendary Ramland Whiskey Mountain bighorn herd near Dubois is a fraction of what it once was, having 

 with pneumonia infections that just won’t go away.

Game and Fish and others have concluded that letting potentially infected wandering bighorns return to the wild isn’t worth the risk, Fry stated.

“If suspected commingling has occurred, Game and Fish will euthanize the wandering bighorn sheep to protect the rest of the wild herd from disease, as is outlined in the statewide Bighorn Sheep/Domestic Sheep Working Group Plan,” she stated.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Is There Another Way?"}]

States admires the Sinks Canyon bighorn herd and was a huge fan of 

, who gained a legendary reputation for his love of people, peanut butter and ramming visitors’ vehicles.

States recalled an instance of bighorns from the Sinks Canyon herd being euthanized after suspected exposure to domestic sheep.

"I did complain about that, because their (Game and Fish’s) policy was to euthanize first and test later,” States said. “I really wanted them to test first and then euthanize, if those diseases were present in those wild sheep."  

In some instances, wandering bighorns could be quarantined, States said.

He thinks that “capturing them until agents could determine their origin and health status” might be better than killing bighorns.

Katie Cheesbrough, executive director of the Wyoming Wild Sheep Foundation, told Cowboy State Daily that the policy of euthanizing sheep that might have had close contact with livestock was “based on the best available science” when it was implemented.

Newer technology, such as GPS wildlife tracking collars, might not make that necessary in every instance, she said.  

However, Game and Fish made the right call with the Cheyenne rams, Cheesbrough said.

“Game and Fish can’t know the travel path they took along the way and they can’t know where they were headed,” she said.

So, euthanizing the rams “was the prudent thing to do,” she added.

Bighorns sheep 2 6 15 26

<title>Wyoming Game And Fish Kills Bighorns That Wandered Into Cheyenne | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A pair of young bighorn sheep rams that wandered into Cheyenne were killed by Wyoming wildlife officials. However, one biologist and wildlife researcher says it's not necessary. He said they should be quarantined instead.

Wyoming Game And Fish Kills Bighorns That Wandered Into Cheyenne

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Crime & Courts

Law Enforcement

CASPER — A north-side Casper man and roommate are without a home after a fire Friday evening that is being investigated as a “suspected arson.”

Casper Police spokesperson Rebekah Ladd said Monday there was “no additional public information available” on the fire in the 100 block of West J Street other than a Sunday statement reporting the investigation in conjunction with the Casper Fire Department.

Ladd said the department would likely do another statement when information becomes available.

Casper Police officers were at the property Monday and led a man from the garage area at the back of the property to one of their patrol vehicles.

The home showed smoke damage to the front door. An upper window appeared to have been broken as part of firefighters' efforts to stop the blaze.

Natrona County Assessor records list Daphne Andrade of Spring, Texas, as the property owner.

Andrade, who works as a hospital nurse in the Houston area, told Cowboy State Daily that it was her father who police assisted off the property.

“I have an insurance adjuster going to check on the property today,” she said. “He was there when the cops came to get my dad. … So he lived in the house and obviously he is displaced.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Asked To Leave"}]

Andrade said her father had a man in his 20s as a roommate who helped him around the property.

“There was a woman coming around and I don’t know how much residence she had taken up, but my dad had asked her to leave,” she said. “That may the reason that they are saying there is an arson involved because of that person.”

Andrade shared the name of a 55-year-old woman who also happens to be listed in the Natrona County jail log as having been arrested by Casper police at 7:42 p.m. Friday. The listing states the woman is in jail on two criminal warrants.

Andrade said she will wait to hear back from her adjuster about the fire damage before determining what will be done with the home.

“I need to talk to my dad to find out what is going to be the best next move,” she said. “I am still in the beginning phases of getting information.”

Casper Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Ross said the department was dispatched to a fire at 5:34 p.m. Friday and updates from the caller indicated someone might be inside.

“After a thorough search of the structure there was no one inside the house at the time of the fire,” Ross said. “Units arrived to find a fire on the back side of the residence spreading. … There was a good amount of smoke.”

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

Ross said more than 20 firefighters and five trucks responded to the 1 1/2-story home and were able to knock down the fire without it spreading to adjacent property and homes.

Ross said the cause had not been determined as of Monday morning.

“The investigation is still underway,” he said. “But they have narrowed it down to the kitchen as where the fire started.”

Ross said his department was investigating the fire cause part of the investigation and the police were handling the collection of evidence and interviews related to the blaze.

He said the investigation into the cause likely will take a couple of weeks.

Casper fire Police Escort 6 15 26

<title>Two Left Homeless After ‘Suspected Arson’ Of North-Side Casper Home | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Casper's police and fire department report they are investigating a "suspected arson" at a north-side home on Friday evening that left two people homeless. “My dad had asked her to leave,” then the fire started, said a woman about someone staying at the house.

Two Left Homeless After ‘Suspected Arson’ Of North-Side Casper Home

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

Clair McFarland

Courts

After the state of Wyoming and a group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys' School sifted through several hours of testimony, video, and evidence, it now falls to a federal court judge to decide whether school staffers violated multiple boys’ rights.

They’re accused of restraining, confining, and using force on them — or if the staffers’ actions are protected by qualified immunity and other safeguards in the law.

 Blaise Chivers-King, Charles “Rees” Karn, and Dylan Tolar 

sued the Wyoming Department of Family Services

, the Wyoming Boys’ School in Worland, and 10 former and current employees in 2024.

The school is a facility to which courts send boys judged delinquent in Wyoming. 

The plaintiffs, all boys who had been committed to the school in 2018 and afterward, alleged that school staffers confined, beat, humiliated and abused them. More plaintiffs joined the case later that year: Haiden Willis, Koby Cranford, and a minor identified by the initials “DH.”

In the months that followed, parties on both sides of the case sifted through several hours of depositions and other evidence.

After that, the boys decided against continuing to sue two of the staffers: Margaret Dahlke and Clark Les Urbin.

U.S. District Court Judge Scott Skavdahl dismissed Dahlke and Urbin from the case on April 8 of this year, at the plaintiffs’ request.

Karn is serving a life sentence in the Wyoming Department of Corrections for 

[{"type":"text","text":"End This, State Says"}]

The government agencies and boys’ school staffers argued in a May 14 brief that Skavdahl should judge the case early in their favor.

The brief largely blames the boys’ behavior for the aggressive interactions between boys and staffers, and for the time some of the boys spent in restraint chairs, solitary confinement, or other disciplinary statuses.

It invokes qualified immunity, which is a legal principle shielding government officials who act reasonably and in good faith from being sued. 

The brief also says two of the defendants, Karn and DH, didn’t do enough to plead their grievances with school authorities before resorting to civil litigation, and that that nullifies their claims.

D.H. has failed to show he suffered physical injury, and the boys haven’t proved they suffered excessive force, deliberate indifference to their medical needs, undue punishment or discrimination based on certain disabilities, the state’s brief alleges.

The former inmates fired back in their own filing Friday, urging the judge to send the case to trial rather than judge it early in favor of the state and staffers.

Their response filing leads with an allegation that school security guard Thad Shaffer said, “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream like a f***ing child … that’s what makes it worth it.” 

The exhibit from which this quote reportedly stems is not yet open to public viewing, the case file says.

However, the Friday filing includes a photo that claims to show one of the plaintiffs lashed to a chair with a mask over his head and a caption that says he would be placed in the restraint chair “for up to 8 hours a day."

The boys’ counter-argument casts doubt on the records the boys’ school is using to make its case.

“The (staffers’) logbooks had large gaps in documentation, inaccurate entries, uncertain authorship, and no verification mechanism,” the filing says. “For example, the Dorm 3 detention logbook has no entries between Apr. 7, 2024, and May 9, 2024, despite DH being in solitary confinement during that time.”

The document asserts that, "Additionally, incident reports were regularly falsified."

Karn and DH did fulfill the grievance requirements, as their parents submitted complaints on their behalf, the filing argues. Also, the school didn’t provide the boys methods to file grievances once they were no loner housed there, says the document.

The boys’ filing calls the state’s claims for qualified immunity inadequate. It says, “Defendants’ legal analysis on these four claims consists entirely of 

[{"type":"text","text":"All These Differences"}]

The state’s brief in favor of early judgment and the boys’ counter-brief tell different stories.

[{"type":"text","text":"Karn was placed at WBS in 2018. "}]

He was placed on detention status numerous times, including for throwing personal items, breaking glasses, disclosing thoughts of hurting others, the state’s brief says.

He was detained for seven days in December 2018 after assaulting a student with a shower head. Court documents dispute whether staffer John Schwalbe shoved Karn’s face into broken glass at that time.

Schwalbe testified that he did not; while the boys’ argument says Schwalbe did restrain Karn on broken glass, and that Schwalbe said, “if you’re going to break shit, then this is pretty much what you’re going to get.”

Karn was restrained numerous times for hitting things in his room, harming himself, hurting others, being disruptive and damaging property, says the state’s brief.

During a second stay at the facility Karn was placed on detention for misbehaviors including acts of violence, pretending to shoot people, damaging property, trying to run away, threatening staff and making terroristic bomb threats on Facebook, says the document.

He was restrained during the second stay, allegedly after punching a staffer, trying to flip or throw a desk, “spinning around to face staff when they entered to clean the detention room camera,” damaging cameras, smearing feces on the detention room, and other misbehaviors.

[{"type":"text","text":"The plaintiffs deny many of these characterizations."}]

The brief points to staffers’ deposition testimonies, in saying that the facility didn’t have safeguards in place to ensure the accuracy of incident reports.

The boys’ brief admits that Karn was placed in solitary confinement after making threats on Facebook, but adds, “(We) Deny that 13 days in solitary confinement for alleged threats was appropriate or that he received meaningful social stimuli, exercise, or education.”

In response to the boys’ school claim that Rees was restrained for trying to harm himself with a sock, the boys’ counter-argument says, “The video shows Rees playing with a sock, not tying it around his  neck or refusing staff instructions. Indeed, one sock appears on his foot the entire time.”

To another claim that  Karn was moved to a vacant dorm after threatening to assault staff and hitting a camera, the response parries that, “The video does not show Rees hitting the camera or threatening to assault staff.”

While the state alleges Karn was restrained in April 2021 after tearing a pillow apart and trying to hit staffers who entered to retrieve the pieces, the boys’ argument counters that a staffer initiated force “without provocation because Rees withheld a piece of pillow stuffing.”

Where the state asserts that Chivers-King was placed on detention status in May of 2020 for threatening and cursing at staff, throwing a chair, kicking his door and punching his window and lights — the boys’ response says Chivers-King toppled, rather than threw a chair. 

The boys’ response denies that Chivers-King continued to escalate, and says there was no reason for a staffer to use force on him, “as the video depicts Blaise (Chivers-King) standing with arms crossed when WBS staff forced him to the ground.”

Where the state asserts that DH continuously refused to follow instructions or engage in programming, the boys’ response says, “The behaviors for which DH was punished were obvious symptoms of his disabilities.”

When DH was in solitary confinement, says the boys’ brief, it was “lonely, depressing, and I had a few bugs for company.”

The state had asserted, conversely, that staffers gave DH “highly individualized attention” during that time to get him on track with the programming.

[{"type":"text","text":"The Clash Continues"}]

Disagreements between what prompted restraints and other punishments pervade the state’s argument and the boys’ counterargument.

In the segment pertaining to how staffers treated DH, the boys’ argument relates from another staffer’s deposition that Coronado called DH a “retard” nearly every day.

The boys’ argument contends that they had known disabilities and staffers didn’t accommodate them, while the state’s argument says of the boys, they “did not request any accommodations for any mental health diagnoses or physical conditions, nor was it obvious (they) needed any.”

Here the state’s argument says, There’s no “evidence plaintiffs were discriminated against ‘by reason of’ their disabilities; rather, the record shows WBS staff’s actions were based on Plaintiffs’ conduct.”

[{"type":"text","text":"Plaintiffs are asking the court to send these claims to trial:"}]

• Excessive force claims that staffers used excessive force by confining Karn and Willis in a restraint chair “for long stretches” when not necessary for people’s safety.

• Excessive force claims that staffers unnecessarily tackled, shoved, slammed and attacked boys who were not resisting, who were already subdued, or whose conduct didn’t merit such force.

• A deliberate indifference claim, asserting staffers were deliberately indifferent to some boys’ risks and serious medical needs.

• A claim that two staffers deprived the boys of due process, by denying them meaningful and periodic reviews of their solitary confinement, and meaningful notice of what they could do to earn release.

• A claim that staffers discriminated against and failed to accommodate the boys due to their various disabilities.

Wyoming Boys School lawsuit 6 15 26

<title>Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A group of young men suing the Wyoming Boys’ School claim they were attacked, confined in a chair and made to wear a mask. “The best part of the chair is watching the kids cry and scream,” a security guard is alleged to have said.

Court Filings Say Wyoming Boys' School Staffers Restrained, Attacked Boys

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

A Minnesota man says he was stunned to learn a stranger spent years building a life in Wyoming allegedly using his name — earning hundreds of thousands of dollars, fathering a child and leaving him to sort out the financial fallout with the IRS and owing child support.

Now, a Gillette welding worker is facing four felony identity theft charges after investigators say he used another man's name and Social Security number to obtain employment and official documents.

Jose Alfredo Guevara-Reyes, 45, made his initial appearance in Campbell County Circuit Court last week after being charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information.

According to court documents, the case began June 8 when Gillette police received a handwritten letter from Martin Almendarez of Minneapolis saying that someone working in Gillette had been using his identity.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Child Support Surprise"}]

For Almendarez, the first signs of trouble didn't come from Wyoming law enforcement.

"I learned that the man who stole my identity had fathered a child," Almendarez said. 

Because the worker allegedly used Almendarez's Social Security number, the child's mother initially believed Almendarez was the father, he said.

The situation escalated when the state of Wyoming notified him that he was on the hook to financially support the child.

"I got a letter from the state of Wyoming saying that they were going to garnish my wages,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Almendarez said even his employer questioned his identity as records tied to the alleged fraud surfaced. The Minnesota man said the ordeal was especially unsettling because he had never met the defendant.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I don't even know him nor have I ever been to Wyoming,\" he said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Welding Shop Discovery"}]

A Minnesota man says a stranger spent years building a life in Wyoming using his identity — earning more than $500,000, fathering a child and leaving the man owing child support. "I don't even know him nor have I ever been to Wyoming,” the man said.

Daily Cartoon 2: Tuesday, December 3, 2024

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