As Lisa Cook reflected on the chaotic scene of a fatal fire at her neighbor’s home Thursday in Riverton, she said, “I just want everybody to know that Macey was a good mom.”
Macey Bowlsby died during or after the incident, according to family and eyewitness reports.
Her two young children, who had been in the home with her when the blaze started to consume the home at about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, were rescued.
Drawing from witness interviews, the Riverton Police Department had originally reported that “good Samaritan” bystanders rushed into the home and saved the children.
The agency learned Friday morning that, rather, it was Bowlsby’s brother who pulled the children from the home, along with another man, RPD Chief Eric Hurtado told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday phone call.
The eyewitness neighbors’ accounts of the incident are chaotic with vivid intervals.
The Rescue
Bert Adcock was outside with her husband, Dan, as he prepared to fuel up one of their vehicles for a Friday trip to Casper, Adcock told Cowboy State Daily in an interview inside her home.
She lives two houses south of the charred home on the 600 block of North Broadway in residential Riverton.
The couple saw Bowlsby’s brother, who lives between Bowlsby’s home and the Adcocks’ house, screaming.
He broke a window. Smoke streamed out of the window.
“I told Dan, ‘My God, the house is on fire, we’ve got to go over there,'” Adcock recalled.
Numerous people, including neighbors and passersby, converged on the scene, she said.
“It was really ugly,” she added.
Adcock said enough people gathered to carry two “babies” out of the home and place them on the ground outside.
She wasn’t sure who rescued the children. Many in the crowd were convinced that at least one more child was in the home, but they learned later that child was at school, said Adcock.
Though Adcock described the children as babies, Bowlsby’s aunt, Brianna West, told Cowboy State Daily in a separate phone interview that they’re closer to preschool or toddler age.
Distressed, Adcock described various burn injuries she’d noticed on the children.
She said “the police” took them to the hospital and they were later flown to get medical care at another facility.
Cook in her own interview would later specify that she witnessed a sheriff’s deputy gather a child into his arms, put the child in his truck and “zoom” to the hospital with one, or maybe both, children.
Adcock said people kept trying to get into the home to rescue the mother and the other child they believed to be with her.
Someone got her out through a window, “and she was gone,” said Adcock.
Bowlsby’s brother was on scene, bloodied from breaking the window, she added.
Adcock said she didn’t know the children’s late mother, but would give the children popsicles in the summertime.
Northward
Cook lives directly to the north of Bowlsby.
She was on the phone with someone and had the window shade shut to block the afternoon sun while the fire was on the rise.
She rose to get a drink of water and start lunch in the kitchen, and through the kitchen window, she noticed that the neighbor’s house was on fire.
She ended her phone call and rushed next door, then rushed back to her own home to retrieve a fire blanket, said Cook.
Then she rushed back to Bowlsby’s home with the fire blanket, entered through the door and threw the blanket down on the flames in her path, she said.
A wind pitched into the doorway and flung the flames up a curtain, so Cook shut the door as other people, then law enforcement, converged to help, she added.
At some point, people Cook said she didn’t know had pulled the children out of the home and placed them in the back yard.
Like Adcock, Cook also described the children’s burn injuries in vivid detail.
Cook threw her garden hose over the fence and turned it on full blast, though she knew it made little difference.
In her recollection, a Riverton Police Department officer was the first on scene.
A sheriff’s deputy gathered one of the children into his arms and rushed off with him, she said.
A man in a cowboy hat with no uniform rushed to the scene, “took charge” of it immediately, vaulted over the fence and rushed into the home, said Cook.
“He actually went in, with no protective gear or anything,” she added.
The cowboy hat, no-uniform description generally fits Fremont County Sheriff Ryan Lee.
Lee confirmed to Cowboy State Daily that he was on scene in his cowboy hat without a uniform, but declined to discuss the incident further.
He referred Cowboy State Daily to the local fire chief, who did not return Cowboy State Daily’s request for comment by publication.
Undersheriff Mike Hutchison told Cowboy State Daily that Lee was on scene, and that the deputy who transported at least one child was Deputy Larry Holladay.
Cook recalled Bowlsby’s brother saying, “My sister! My sister’s still inside.”
She said she thought firefighters retrieved the woman, “but by then it was too late.”
The firefighters blasted the home with a hose, and it blew out the windows, said Cook, who recalled picking shards of glass from her yard.
“It was pretty scary, because everything around here, the trees and everything, is just a tinderbox,” she said.
You See Those?
Cook brimmed with tender stories about Bowlsby and the children.
“You see those big stumps?” she said, gesturing to hewn tree stumps in Bowlsby’s front yard. “She was having the kids hammer away, to hammer out big circles in the trunks because she was going to plant flowers out there.”
So the kids got to whale on the trunks with hammers, said Cook with a tearful laugh.
“Adorable family,” she said. “Never failed to greet me or ask me how my day was.”
She remembered an incident from days prior when the children were eager to show Cook new skateboards they’d received.
She said she hopes for the best for the children who were burned.
Nope
A family member to the children, Denise Hunsberger was among the first to dispute RPD’s earlier description of bystanders rushing into the home to save the children.
According to Hunsberger's Friday interview, responders stopped Bowlsby’s brother from going back into the home to save Bowlsby.
“He tried his best,” she said.
The neighbors may have witnessed another man trying to go in because a child’s father was trying to get into the home to rescue the little girl who, it turned out, was at school, said Hunsberger.
“But yeah, it’s just been kind of overwhelming,” she said.
RPD Chief Hurtado told Cowboy State Daily that he was unsure as to whether first responders stopped the brother from reentering the home: by then the police chief was in the burning home with others.
He and others looked for the children who were supposedly there but who were actually at school, he said.
Hurtado confirmed that RPD’s earlier statement crediting bystanders with rescuing the children was based on interviews with eyewitnesses.
They located Bowlsby’s brother later and learned Friday morning that he and another man who’d arrived on scene in a truck pulled the children out through a window, rather.
“The children were trying to get out a window,” said Hurtado.
As for the visible efforts of the sheriff, Hurtado said, “I can confirm that. Sheriff Lee was there and from what I remember, he helped bring the hose in while we were inside. He pulled the hose to us, while firemen were inside.”
All victims were transported to medical care. Bowlsby was not pronounced deceased until after that transport, said Hurtado.
The chief said investigators are trying to piece evidence together, and are working with the State Fire Marshals Office to determine a cause of the fire.
A fire investigator was on scene Friday morning while Cowboy State Daily spoke with neighbors.
The Children
Brianna West, who said she’s Bowlsby’s aunt, told Cowboy State Daily in a Friday phone call that she’s set up an account with Wyoming Community Bank in Riverton under the name “Macey Bowlsby’s Children Fund.”
She said the rescued children are fighting for their lives.
Clair McFarland can be reached at clair@cowboystatedaily.com.
