It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Tuesday, July 7th. I’m Mac Watson
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A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the man has made a public apology.
“Just before midnight, Matthew Raymond Lynch headed outside to the Other Side Bar and Grill. He made it as far as the entrance, the outside part, when he decided to light a firecracker. Lynch said that when he tried to light the firework, it blew up immediately. He also said that he lost all of the fingers on his right hand. He said he had partial blindness and a loss of hearing. He was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital and then airlifted to Billings.”
The bar was hosting a Fourth of July fundraiser concert and the music ended, patrons were beginning to head home. That’s when Lynch lit a firework which exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off his hand and injuring four other people. He apologized on social media.
Read the full story HERE.
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After decades of chasing diversification, Wyoming is finally landing on data centers. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the boom is forcing the state to confront a familiar boom-and-bust tension.
“Talking with Tyler Lindholm. He's a Crook County rancher, former state legislator, and he works for American Prosperity. And so he kind of sees both ends of the spectrum, right? He wants to see the opportunity come with data centers, but the questions about water and power use are absolutely fair. Talking with Senator Kail Case, he wonders ‘Does this represent an overbuild?’ Analysts are estimating upwards of 3000 facilities on top of an existing 4000 but those 3000 new facilities, they aren't anywhere near the size of the old ones. They are gargantuan, they are exponentially bigger, and so is it over building?”
Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming willing to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces?
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming's most famous diesel “delete" mechanic Troy Lake, who was pardoned by Trump after a prison stint, advocated for the president to pardon at least six more. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports on Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.
“What Troy Lake has done is actually looked for people that are like him, and he's building a coalition, the Diesel Freedom Coalition. The Diesel Freedom Coalition has been working on the science and the policy and the pardon lobby side, so they're pushing for pardons for people they feel are good candidates. They are also, Troy Lake especially, and his son TJ, you're trying to build the science to show better means of reducing emissions without putting people out of business and sending them into limp mode on the interstate, and they're also talking to lawmakers about those better ways forward.”
Besides pardon-related advocacy, Lake said his group is working to provide sound emissions evidence and mechanical strategies to policymakers, to persuade them to pivot toward emissions regulations that don’t crush small-time trucking businesses and other fleets.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Casper man accused of holding a toddler “like a shield” in front of him during an armed standoff said Monday he intends to change his plea. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingbeck reports that police say that Brayden Randolph “told officers he had a gun and officers had guns and challenged officers to get him.”
“The call to police said that there had been a gunshot fired, and after they got there, he appeared at a door at one point, had a toddler in his arm and a gun in his belt with his hand on the gun, challenging police to come get him, so that standoff ended with the child being rescued by police, and then breaking through a door, arresting him, and he since then has been out of court on $7,000 bond, was in court today at what's called a ‘docket appearance’ and his attorney said he's going to change his plea.”
Charges against Randolph include reckless endangerment, child endangerment, being a minor in possession of alcohol and interference with a peace officer.
Read the full story HERE.
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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.
Cowboy State Daily News continues now….
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After spending about $200,000 in goat grazing for flood mitigation since 2025, the town of Rock Springs is putting an end to it for now. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that one council member said residents say it’s too expensive.
“The goats provided an efficient way to mitigate this risk, so you're not having to bring in all this heavy equipment or have you know manpower down there in the really thick, thick vegetation, the goats just did it all. The problem, or the controversy with it, is that it came at what people thought was a pretty high price tag. So, it went from $50,000 the first go around, to $58K the second go around, to $92K the third go around.”
According to Mayor Max Mickelson, during the latest grazing session, which began April 1st and ended June 30th, the goats removed roughly 35 tons of vegetation.
Read the full story HERE.
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Conservationist Rich Guenzel understands why many people, including Wyoming Game and Fish, wrongly call one of the state's signature animals “antelope.” But Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that it bugs Guenzel so much, he’s started a “pronghorn swear jar” and makes people pay $1.
“It irritates him when they get their called antelope, because this is that same discussion as buffalo or bison, you know that sort of thing, moose or elk. Well, you know what is what the animal is actually called? Because just, as an aside, in Europe, some people call what we call moose, they call an elk. According to the research he's looked into, especially with the latest technology, genetic mapping, they've been able to determine that the nearest, the only very distant living relative of the pronghorn is, and a lot of people will be surprised by this, actually giraffes.”
Guenzel tells Cowboy State Daily that all the money he collects from his swear jar goes to pronghorn conservation groups.
Read the full story HERE.
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It’s been fourteen months after a man was found shot in the head in an abandoned truck on the Wind River Indian Reservation. But, Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports prosecutors have no ongoing, public murder case in the December 2024 death of Riverton man Rex Lofts, even though Jose A. Gonzales was arrested.
“Gonzales was charged in Fremont County on the state level in last October, and he is the only one that the prosecutor had jurisdiction over the other suspects, the way Fremont County Chief Deputy Attorney Tim Hancock put it to me. The Feds have jurisdiction over those other suspects. Well, this all is alleged to have happened in the same remote place on the reservation. So, what that says to me is okay, probably Gonzalez is not a tribal member, and the others are, because the feds take jurisdiction for tribal members implicated in crimes on the reservation, whereas your local elected prosecutor would handle crimes just involving non-tribal members.”
The 72-year-old Lofts died of what the autopsy report called a homicide with two gunshots in his head around Dec. 2, 2024. According to the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation, his body wasn’t found until April 21, 2025.
Read the full story HERE.
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Everyone has a dream. A Powell man has built a "Dumb And Dumber" Mutt Cutts van replica with his best friend. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that so far, the two haven’t been able to recreate one of the more memorable scenes from the 1994 film starring Jeff Daniels and Jim Carrey.
“20-year-old Parker Williams wanted to make a YouTube video that would gain attention from his peers, and so he decided to draw inspiration from one of his favorite movies, Dumb and Dumber, and recreate the Mutt Cuts van. Williams, with the help of his friend Seth Siebert, found an old van and decided to fix it up. It took him about three or four days. A lot of people want to stop and take pictures with him. He said he has not been pulled over yet, but he is looking forward to that. One of the movie's most iconic scenes is when Lloyd and Harry are pulled over by a trooper who thinks that they're drinking alcohol, and Lloyd hands him a bottle of his own urine.”
Williams tells Cowboy State Daily that building the van was more complicated than he expected. He and his buddy spent hours wiring custom headlights and blinkers so it could legally travel Wyoming roads.
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.
