It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, March 12th. I’m Mac Watson.
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The young daughter of a 24-year-old woman was found dead on Saturday, shot in the face in a Riverton motel room. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports court documents say that the little girl told authorities: “Daddy was mad at mommy,” and “Mommy’s dead.”
“What we know from the affidavit by Riverton Police Department detective Peter McCall is that the original caller was reporting that the little girl had found her mother unresponsive in the room. And we also know that there's video showing the little girl entering the room with her family at about 11pm the night before, and the footage shows the father leaving and coming back in the wee hours of the morning, according in court documents, so the evidence at this juncture indicates that the girl was in the room. There may be evidence later to read, but at this juncture, that's the indication. And when a victim witness coordinator was, you know, talking engaging with a little girl, later at the police station, she was saying things like, ‘Daddy was mad at mommy, mommy's dead,’ according to the affidavit.”
According to court affidavits, 25-year-old Sterling Louis Black Jr., turned himself in to police on Saturday afternoon, and now faces one count of second-degree murder.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 14-year-old Cheyenne boy is being charged as an adult with first-degree murder, accused of shooting his mother in the head from behind. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports Havoc Leone initially reported to the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office investigators that his mother, Theresa McIntosh, had killed herself.
“The call was called in as an attempted suicide. When authorities got there, they discovered that the situation just didn't add up to suicide. Number one, she was shot in the back of the head by the ear, in a spot where they said, it's not usual that someone would put a gun to themselves. It wasn't obvious from the wound that there was contact with the gun, and it came at a little bit of a distance. And the boy himself said there was a struggle for the gun, and it just went off. But at another time, he told them in pretty good detail how he had the gun in his closet, he retrieved it, and that he shot her in the back of the head.”
According to court affidavits, the buildup to the shooting began about 90 minutes before McIntosh was killed when she and her common-law husband — Leone’s biological father — argued with the teen about an electronic tablet he stole from the home of a cleaning client of his mother’s.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming House leaders on Wednesday dismissed ethics complaints against Democratic Reps. Mike Yin and Karlee Provenza over the “CheckGate” scandal. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that House Speaker Pro Tem Jeremy Haroldson said they didn't break any rules, but their actions did cause fallout.
“Representative Carly Provenza shot a photograph February 9 of Rebecca Bell handing out checks to lawmakers on the House floor after a tournament. And she handed that off to the press, and she has given multiple reasons for this thing. She didn't want the incident to be swept under the rug. Now the allegation has been that she violated the rules by not filing a confidential ethics complaint. Instead, you know, the ethics complaint rule doesn't say you have to file an ethics complaint when you have an issue. It lays out what happens when you do that and how you do that. Now, some of her detractors are saying, well, when she was calling for an investigative committee, that was tantamount to an ethics complaint. The ethics committee didn't find that she had, that she had actually broken the rules, but said that
that the way she chose to do it caused pain.”
One House lawmaker and multiple private citizens filed a total of four official complaints this session against Yin, of Jackson, and Provenza, of Laramie.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll be back with more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily news continues now…
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The Wyoming Senate tried and failed by nine votes Wednesday to override Gov. Mark Gordon’s veto of a bill called the “Second Amendment Protection Act.” Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that sheriffs for all 23 Wyoming counties opposed the bill, calling it messy and overreaching.
“So the legislature contemplated three vetoes on Wednesday. One was an attempt to get rid of an account that the governor uses for projects. The other two were his veto of the Second Amendment protection act and his veto of a bill aimed at blocking governments from deducting union dues from people's paychecks from public employees' paychecks. And all three override attempts failed, so all three vetoes held the two we reported on Second Amendment protection act. All Wyoming sheriffs opposed because they said they'd get in the crossfire of broad language and be chilled all together from ever working with federal agents.”
Senate File 101 would have expanded existing Wyoming law, which already imposes a misdemeanor for state police officers who violate people’s Second Amendment rights by enforcing unconstitutional federal gun laws.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Torrington woman accused of allowing her boyfriend to perform sex acts with a 4-year-old girl is scheduled for a plea hearing Thursday. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports the boyfriend of Angela Montoya, already convicted for abusing the child, will be sentenced on Friday.
“There are totally different ends of the prosecution spectrum here. After he'd been convicted, they learned, oh, he's a second secret cell phone. His attorney had custody of it. They got us. They got a search warrant. The attorney turned it over. When they looked in there, they found all kinds of other stuff, including lengthy text messages, text threads between the boyfriend and girlfriend about sex acts with the girl.”
Montoya’s affidavit outlines a convoluted relationship between her and Syrovatka, who lived together while he was married to someone else in another town in Wyoming.
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming has launched a $4 million Outdoor Rec and Tourism Trust Fund to expand trails and amenities. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports the goal is to manage the impacts of a booming tourism industry while improving quality of life for residents and boosting local economies.
“Part of the idea behind the outdoor recreation tourism account is, how can we be more proactive about our outdoor amenities? Lots of places in Wyoming that are already too popular and don't have the right amenities, don't have parking spaces, don't have camping sites. So, this Wyoming tourism account Trust Fund was set up. It's being funded by tourism dollars. Again, heads and beds are paying for this. Compared to Wyoming's neighbors, Utah put $40 million on the ground last year.”
The first installment from its newly created Outdoor Rec & Tourism Trust Account, finalized in 2024, will be awarded this spring. That’s an initial $4 million for developing new outdoor tourism across the state or solving existing problems at places that have already become too popular.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Wyoming fly-fisherman and his clients were on a stretch of the North Platte River legendary for its trout when they caught a muskrat on their line instead. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports the determined rodent chased and bit a string leech on a fishing fly, just like a trout would.
“The guy, he says, you know, once in a while, like muskrats, they'll get accidentally snagged on people's hooks, but he's never actually seen one deliberately try to bite it like that. So the way it ended up is, you know, they got it reeled in and he managed, you know, to pick the poor thing up and then use his forceps and, you know, get the hook out of its mouth. And they took a couple pictures and let him go. And the muskrat was fine, apparently. But it's definitely within the realm of possibility, because rodents, including muskrats, will occasionally eat insects.”
Craig Kwiatkowski, a fishing guide with the Wyoming Fly Fishing Guide Service tells Cowboy State Daily that he's seen a few muskrats get accidentally snagged by angler’s hooks, but a muskrat aggressively hitting a fishing fly was a first.
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, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app. Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.
