Daily Smile

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"You've been booped.."}]

Smile no play 7 7 26

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

<title>Daily Smile: Tuesday, July 7, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

You've been booped.....

Daily Smile: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

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

Clair McFarland

Government & Politics

Politics

After Wyoming’s most famous diesel delete mechanic Troy Lake 

 Nov. 7 from President Donald Trump, he started advocating for other mechanics who, like him, were hit with prison time, fines or both for tampering with diesel emissions systems.

[{"type":"text","text":"Trump pardoned nine more diesel delete mechanics Friday."}]

 before he was pardoned, had advocated for six of those:

Ryan and Wade LaLone, Tim Clancy, Matt Geouge, Mac Spurlock, and Joshua Davis.

Wyoming-based lobbyist Jeff Daugherty and Colorado-based attorney Stewart Cables, who work with Lake and his fledgling group Diesel Freedom Coalition, had represented five of those six (not Davis).

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.

“Sometimes it makes you think, are we really making any traction? Are we really going anywhere? Because government moves at a snail pace,” Lake reflected in his Monday interview.

[{"type":"text","text":"Then came Friday, and the news of pardons. "}]

[{"type":"text","text":"“And all of a sudden, it’s there,” the Cheyenne man said.  "}]

Lake said U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, is another key advocate. Sullivan had taken up Spurlock’s case and written a March 12 letter to the president urging a pardon.

The other three delete mechanics pardoned Friday were: Jonathan Achtemeyer, Aaron Rudolf, and Barry Pierce.

“It’s a small community,” said Daugherty of the diesel mechanic world. “A lot of these folks know each other.”

Daugherty and Cables, who work together, both told Cowboy State Daily they search specifically for small-business techs with non-notable or zero criminal history who have been convicted of Clean Air Act violations under an interpretation that they call invalid.

The Biden administration invoked a statute long used to prosecute people for tampering with big stationary emissions monitoring systems – such as on a chemical plant – to charge people who’d tweaked or reprogrammed trucks’ computers instead.

The Trump administration withdrew from that interpretation earlier this year, and told the U.S. Department of Justice to stop charging delete mechanics criminally. Civil penalties may still apply.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge always loved diesel pickup trucks."}]

He told Cowboy State Daily he started tinkering with diesel engines because his first vehicle was a Ford with a six-liter Power Stroke engine. He learned to tune it at age 17, which would have been in about 2004.

[{"type":"text","text":"He was hooked."}]

In June 2007, at age 20, he started his own repair business, Spartan Diesel Technologies, in Hendersonville, North Carolina.

One year later, manufacturers started adding diesel particulate filters to the stock engines.  

Expensive, recurring repair jobs limped into Geouge’s business, he recalled.

“Small business owners, farmers, emergency service people, hot shot haulers that had these trucks – these were failing left and right,” said Geouge. “They were defective from the moment they rolled off the assembly line.”

Geoge helped by installing alternative software – a process called “tuning.”

Back then, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency didn’t pursue criminal charges against delete and tune mechanics who worked around emissions systems.

Emissions systems grew more complex and expansive. Trucks kept breaking down, Geouge said. Looking back, he said, the timing was “both great and terrible.”

He got into diesel work because it was fun. But problems from what he called volatile and problematic emissions systems found him.  

“It wasn’t where I expected the business to go. But it went there out of necessity,” Geouge said.

In 2013 the EPA filed a civil case against him, which continued for about a year and a half.

[{"type":"text","text":"“That was incredibly expensive,” said Geouge."}]

 A notice of violation hit him in 2015. Spartan Diesel shut down in 2017.

During the Biden administration, the EPA tilted toward pursuing criminal prosecutions against delete mechanics.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office of North Carolina charged Geouge in 2021 with two felonies: conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act, and another charge of tax evasion.

Geouge maintains he did not commit tax evasion. He and Cables both cast that charge as a leverage move by prosecutors to get him to plead guilty.

“That was great evidence of weaponization,” Cables said. “I think the U.S. Attorneys will use whatever leverage they can to bully people into taking a plea deal.”

Cables said the “tax evasion” comprised past-due IRS obligations – normally something that would prompt a repayment plan or civil penalty.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge said it was fallout from his business going broke."}]

“They also threatened to charge his fiancée with felonies for aiding and abetting and tax evasion to get Matt to plead guilty to the felonies,” said Cables.

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge did plead guilty, in early 2022."}]

He was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. He was also fined about $2.5 million, he said Monday.

One month before his June 2022 sentencing hearing, Geouge’s and his fiancée, Caroline, learned that she was pregnant, Geouge recalled.

He checked into prison at USP Lee, Virginia, July 28, and prepared to miss his baby’s birth.

But at the end of August 2022, Geouge’s body went into diabetic ketoacidosis and he was hospitalized in intensive care for eight days, he said.

After the medical incident he returned to prison and learned there how to use insulin. He was 35.

Geouge was released to home confinement on Dec. 13, 2022. Forty-three days later, his son was born.

[{"type":"text","text":"The fallout from being a convicted felon brought surprises."}]

Geouge went to start a new business with a colleague once he was out of prison, and found banks were hesitant to work with him. Unable to possess firearms, he also lost his gun-building business, which he had run out of Spartan Diesel while the shop still lived.

Ryan LaLone had a similar experience, he told Cowboy State Daily in his own interview Monday.

He lives in northern Michigan. Hunting affinity runs in his blood, he said.

“And I think I’ve voted in every election since I’ve been able to vote. I’m proud to be an American; I want to vote,” said LaLone.

He said he walked into a bank with an 810 credit score after his conviction, hoping to buy a camper.

[{"type":"text","text":"“And they were like, well, but you’ve got a felony,” LaLone said."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Geouge’s shop wasn’t raided."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Ryan LaLone’s was, on Nov. 2, 2018, he said."}]

“Probably 30 agents, I mean, guns blazing, riot gear, I mean you’d have thought we were cooking meth in there. It was unreal,” LaLone said.

That got his small hometown of Gaylord, Michigan, stirring, he recalled. The reputational hit hurt his shop, Diesel Freak, as did the criminal case, he said.

LaLone started his shop in 2007 in Gaylord – a small, conservative-leaning town. His brother Wade came to work for him in 2012, LaLone said.  

Ryan said his goal was “just keep the trucks running. We didn’t blow smoke. We weren’t into this crazy stuff you see on the internet.” He said the Michigan Department of Transportation hired him one spring to repair striper trucks for the short work season.

But the criminal case didn’t start until after Trump’s first administration ended.

That’s a similar account to Lake. His wife, Holly, told Cowboy State Daily in an interview last year that the investigators essentially vanished after federal agents raided their shop – which was then in northern Colorado – in late 2018.

Pressure from the federal prosecutor’s office mounted in the autumn of 2022 and LaLone was formally charged April 26, 2023, with one count of conspiring to violate the Clean Air Act and two counts of violating it – all felonies.

LaLone said his attorney told him Vice President Kamala Harris had made such violations a priority, and that it was futile to fight. He took a plea deal as soon as his charge surfaced publicly.

LaLone didn’t do time in prison. He said he was offered the choice between prison or a hefty fine and took the fine: $750,000 for his business and $7,500 for him.

[{"type":"text","text":"Voided Warranty Tuning"}]

Achtemeier learned how to tune a vehicle, meaning reprogram its on-board diagnostic system, remotely.

He told Cowboy State Daily that he started reconfiguring diesel systems to ignore emissions flags because some of the emissions sensors and parts shot to eight times their normal price during COVID, or became unavailable. Tractors stalled in the field during harvest time, he said. 

Through his shop Voided Warranty Tuning he gained a national following as an expert engine tuner and the nickname “diesel engine software god,” says a prosecutor’s Feb. 7, 2025, filing urging a judge to give him a harsher sentence, in part because of his sophistication in the trade.

In late 2025, Achtemeier spent four months in federal prison in Manchester, Kentucky, and was fined $25,000.

It could have been worse. His original charges called for up to 31 years in prison and potentially millions in fines.

He shuttered his diesel shop Voided Warranty Tuning years before his criminal prosecution started. He’d taken to driving a truck instead.

Achtemeier was still on supervised release until Friday, when he got news of his pardon. He cared for his horses, and cleaned out their stalls, in an unprecedented heat wave Friday afternoon, he told Cowboy State Daily. Then he collapsed onto the couch, sat with his dogs, and nodded off.

[{"type":"text","text":"The phone rang."}]

“I almost didn’t answer it. I thought it was spam,” said Achtemeier.

It was the White House. Achtemeier struggled to rationalize what the person was saying.

“It’s still kind of surreal, you know?” he said Monday. He said he never expected to be pardoned, adding, “I’m just some small-town guy.”

Like LaLone, Geouge and Lake, Achtemeier described his lost gun and civic rights as dear to him. He lives in New Jersey, but explains his rural environment as, “We’re in a big farm area. ‘Friday The 13th’ New Jersey not ‘Sopranos’ New Jersey.”

He’s from the West Coast, and was charged in the federal U.S. District Court for western Washington in March 2024.

While on probation he couldn’t leave the state, which makes it “hard to do oversized trucking.”

Achtemeier said he had filed his pardon request paperwork for himself. He said he’s unaware of anyone advocating for him but grateful if someone did.

Still, Achtemeier said he was inspired by Lake – whom he and others cast as a celebrity of the diesel tech world.

Without Lake and another mechanic and activist, Kory Willis, “I don’t think this would have happened,” said Achtemeier.

“Troy put a spotlight on how bad these (prosecutions) were,” he said. “I’m just thankful for Trump seeing this, and thankful for anybody that directly or indirectly made this happen.”

Each of the mechanics who spoke with Cowboy State Daily on Monday said they understand the air cleanliness objective. But the manufacturers’ emissions systems, which cripple small businesses, are a heartless way to chase it, they said.

“It’s not an either/or situation,” said Geouge. “Automotive technology has gotten to the point where the electronic controls are so accurate, you can have a clean-running truck without these excessive, unreliable, and expensive components bolted all over it.”

Cables echoed the mechanics’ gratitude, saying, “We are very thankful that the Trump administration is taking an interest in our cases and we are very thankful to President Trump for granting these pardons.”

The president, said Cables, “is rightfully spending his time and attention on these domestic issues, like the emissions weaponization cases.”

Troy Lake and Trump 7 6 26

<title>Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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. On Friday, Trump pardoned those six, plus three others.

Wyoming's Famous Diesel Mechanic Gets Presidential Pardons For Others

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Energy

Economic developers have spent decades trying to diversify Wyoming’s economy away from the volatile boom-and-bust cycles of its coal, oil and gas industries. Tech infrastructure — data centers — seemed like the answer, and is something the state’s been pursuing for the last 20-plus years. 

Now that data centers are finally racing toward the state’s wide-open prairies and cheap power, however, the rush is forcing a choice. How much growth is Wyoming will to accept, and at what cost to power bills, water supplies, and its wide-open spaces? 

Wyoming wants high-paying jobs and more housing so it has a future for its children. It loses 70% of its youths by the time they’re 30, according to state officials. 

But, at the same time, it also wants quiet prairie, low power bills, and tight control over scarce water supplies. Each new data center is a tug on all those resources.

To longtime Cheyenne attorney and Councilman Larry Wolfe, this tension is actually nothing new. Wyoming has long been a place where its residents understand that boom almost always precedes bust and broken promises. Many have thus learned to be skeptical of promises and promise makers. 

In fact, the bigger the promise is, the higher the skepticism goes.

“This is exactly the discussion that went on all over the state as we’ve seen all of our energy booms and busts that we’ve endured,” Wolfe told Cowboy State Daily in a previous interview. “And I think people are a bit schizophrenic about this, because they live in Wyoming for a reason.”

Sometimes those reasons are fairly simple. It falls somewhere between knowing your neighbors and having a short drive to get away from them all to a place where the night sky is clean and clear and the Milky Way can be seen.

Holding onto that is about preserving a quality of life that has not only drawn people to the state but kept them here. And it’s about making sure the price paid for such treasure doesn’t come too cheaply. 

“This is just another long cycle of that over the years,” Wolfe said. “It’s just the way Wyoming is. We’ve always had this sense that we want to maintain the Wyoming that we have. But we also realize that it’s not sustainable without all of these things coming in, making these huge investments, and putting our people to work, and then building the housing that will, in fact, accommodate that.”

For Wolfe, data centers are just the latest boom-time bargain, promising investment and jobs while testing how much Wyoming is willing to change. 

Today’s push-pull on data centers has an element of deja vu for economic developers, too. 

Wyoming Business Alliance President Renny MacKay agreed with Wolfe that the conversation is really nothing new. The best illustration of that is found in former Gov. Dave Freudenthal’s book, “Wyoming: The Paradox of Plenty."

“He explains it well,” MacKay told Cowboy State Daily. “The tension between that and diving into when the coal industry came to Wyoming. There was a lot of concern about that.”

That happened around the same time as the cattle bust of the 1980s, MacKay said, and has led to an iconic bumper sticker often referenced in Wyoming.

“Dear God give me one more boom,” the bumper sticker goes. “And I promise not to piss it all away next time.”

Skepticism when it comes to economic development is not necessarily bad, MacKay added, particularly if an effort isn’t private-sector led.

“Sometimes you’ve got to take some bets,” he said. “But what we’re seeing now that I think is so positive is the private sector is trying to lead this. Data centers aren’t coming here and asking for any sort of land donation or incentive to come at this point. The conditions, the economic conditions, are in a great place for us to attract some new industries.”

That doesn’t have to just be data centers, MacKay added. Done right, it could also lead to other developments as well. The new nuclear power plant in Kemmerer is an example, as is the nuclear fuel production plant that’s coming to Gillette.

“They’re not coming here and saying, ‘If you invest in our company, then we can grow in Wyoming',” MacKay said. “That’s why I think the business industry sees so much opportunity right now in Wyoming’s future.”

Growth, MacKay added, is key to Wyoming’s future, even if there might be challenges.

“To some degree, you have to take a step back and look at the forest,” he said. “There are so many people who are excited about this moment. They see that their livelihoods are being improved. They’ve got jobs, they’ve got family members who’ve got jobs. So when we’re talking about building Wyoming and attracting people who want to invest in Wyoming as individuals and families, they’re wealth generators and they want to help make this state and our communities more prosperous.”

Making life great for the next generation is the bedrock of MacKay’s own personal motivation. 

“I look out at my own kids, right,” he said. “Or even my neighbor’s, too, and my peers. They’re starting to see more opportunity in Wyoming, where they don’t have to leave to find a great job. So let’s stay focused on the positive, because I think more people do truly want job creation in Wyoming and want higher-paying jobs that we’re starting to see happen.”

Crook County rancher and former state legislator Tyler Lindholm with Americans For Prosperity gets both ends of the spectrum. He absolutely wants to see Wyoming hang onto what makes it the Cowboy State.

It’s fair, he added, to question the guardrails around important issues like power consumption and water use.

“Wyoming is fantastic at producing energy,” Lindholm told Cowboy State Daily. “Clearly, these data centers recognize that. So, I think it’s fair to bring up certain scenarios. I mean, when people talk about their rates being affected because of a new, large industrial load coming in, I think it’s fair to bring up that concern and let the company address that. Let the local utility address that, and if they won’t address that, by golly, let’s pass a law ensuring that you are only going to pay for what you get. Those types of scenarios are completely fair.”

But “screaming and shrieking to hear themselves scream and shriek” in an election year isn’t coming from a “principled standpoint,” Lindholm said. 

There’s a distinction between policy-focused criticism and what he sees as election-year theatrics, he added.

“We need to let the economy work,” he said. “And I think we can have our cake and eat it, too. We can do responsible development and see the economic growth and be a beneficiary of it.”

Not through moratoriums to shut down business, or aggressive zoning crafted to choke business out — both proposals that have surprised Lindholm in a deeply conservative state. 

That kind of approach, he added, is not what Wyoming is best known for. The state is better known for everybody putting “heads together” and coming up with a plan that preserves what’s important while allowing economic prosperity. 

That’s what the state did when it was developing its bedrock energy industries. That’s what Lindholm hopes to see happen with data centers, which want to rely on and help bolster the state’s legacy energy industries.

“Maybe I’m too optimistic that we have the capability to do big things and make big plans, but I think if they — and outfits like Microsoft have been outspoken that they’ve got those situations handled,” he said. "I think it’s also fair to say, 'OK, well let’s make that part of the deal'. Let’s put it in law and make it so that it covers every data center that’s even already in place.”

At the same time, lawmakers could also handle other issues, Lindholm added, such as making it illegal for elected officials to sign NDAs with private companies.

That kind of secrecy isn’t the right approach, Lindholm added. 

“This is 2026, the age of information, where anybody can look up anything at the drop of a hat,” Lindholm said. “So maybe this is a lesson to big business, big industrial loads, is to get out in front of this, talk about it publicly, and talk about how you’re not going to raise electricity rates.”

Lindholm’s bottom line is that Wyoming should write clear rules on rates, transparency and water use, so new projects can enter the state smoothly.

Lindholm wasn’t the only voice across the state suggesting it’s important to strike the right balance for incoming data centers.

Business owners, too, are largely supportive, but also want to see that thought has been put into appropriate guardrails.

“I’m pro data center, but I’m not pro reckless development,” Frog Creek Partners owner Brian Deurloo told Cowboy State Daily. “I’m not blind to the impact of data centers, but I’m saying Wyoming should lead solutions. Water, power, heat, workforce, land impacts need to be engineered and negotiated upfront.”

Cheyenne business owner Tighe Fagan, who leads an enterprise software and IT consulting company called Gannett Peak Technical Services, told Cowboy State Daily data centers probably wouldn’t be his first pick, so he understands everyone’s pain with a lot of boxy-looking warehouses taking up space.

“It’s not the way they exactly want it,” he said. “But to me it’s like, well, we want diversification, and this is a vector into that.”

The plus side to multiple data centers, though, is more career flexibility for that sector, which can help businesses like his with recruitment and retention of Wyoming youths.

“I’m trying to recruit people out of the university to come work at my company, so I want an ecosystem where they can come and there’s agglomeration,” he said. “That’s where you have options. Like, OK, if we get a bunch of data centers, well then the people working at Google can jump over to Microsoft.”

For Fagan, a certain level of “agglomeration” means graduates will be more likely to build careers in Wyoming instead of leaving.”

Are Data Centers Paying Their Fair Share?

One of the central questions some lawmakers are asking is whether Wyoming is taxing data centers appropriately.

State Sen. Cale Case has been among the most outspoken voices on that front.

Wyoming’s tax structure was crafted when the state didn’t have much experience with data centers. 

“We had no idea how much money it was actually going to cost us,” Case said. “And we didn’t think through that very well.”

The employment stats from a data center, once built, are small, Case said, while its demands on resources are potentially outsized when it comes to power consumption. That’s true even if data centers adopt a “bring your own power” mentality, because they’ll be using substantial resources from one or another commodity market, he said.

Even if data centers adopt a “bring your own power” mentality, they’ll be using substantial resources from one or another commodity market. That means they’ll still have impacts on the overall marketplace even if they build their own power generation. 

That has him questioning just how good they are for economic development, which was the original rationale for the state’s sales-tax break.

In his view, Wyoming is giving up significant tax revenue in exchange for relatively few permanent jobs, and a potentially heavy load for power and other systems. 

“I’m not sure that we’re being negative when we say, ‘This is not living up to what we thought it would',” Case said. “I’m not sure that’s what we mean when we say, ‘We’re open for business'.”

The economic development Wyoming wants is more related to having kids in schools and vibrant communities, Case said. And vibrant communities mean having data centers pay for the impact of their presence. 

“What is the value of the servers?” he said. “You could find that out by the property tax, and then you could multiply them by the sales tax that’s been foregone, which is 8%, and then just ask yourself if that’s worth it.”

Thirty-five other states have data-center tax breaks like Wyoming’s, he added, which has contributed to a race to the bottom, with each state vying to outdo the other to lure data centers.

“My gut tells me that these guys just want to build these things,” Case said. “They don’t really care about the cost. They don’t care if they have to completely go to a closed-loop cooling system. They don’t care if they have to build their own electricity. They want it so bad, and I just don’t think that they need our sales tax break.”

What Case wants to do is work on eliminating the break across the country. 

“Then data centers will be even better for our communities, because they’ll be contributing to community infrastructure,” Case said. 

And if the state’s data center boom ultimately goes bust, it will also mean the state is on stronger footing to deal with any fallout.

Analysts, Case added, are estimating new data center construction of upwards of 3,000 facilities on top of an existing 4,000. Those new builds will be exponentially larger than anything previous. 

But does that match the real need? Or does it represent overbuilding, as some analysts think?

“There’s got to be a market for data processing, right?” Case said. “I mean, there’s implicit price in there. There are companies that are searching for it. There’s demand that’s growing. There’s supply factors. so the question is, could we get overextended? Could we have overbuild? And actually this is what happens with virtually anything else. You have rampant people trying to enter a market, whether it’s planting corn or the big boom in whatever we’re talking about. It always ends. It never goes on forever.”

The question then becomes, who is left holding the bag, and what will that mean for the communities involved.

“That’s another reason to not have soft tax breaks that exacerbate (the situation),” Case said. “We need to try to steady things out. We really ought to be talking to other states about joint policies, instead of pursuing this zero-sum game of you put in a tax break, so I got to put in a tax break. Everybody puts in a tax break. Then we all end up getting nothing when they’re willing to pay, and they’re not impactless.”

Case is not arguing against data centers but against subsidies that, in his view, magnify risk if the boom ultimately goes bust. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"An Important Crossroads"}]

Wyoming, Gov. Mark Gordon told Cowboy State Daily during a recent data center tour in Cheyenne, stands at a crossroads, one that will define its future. 

He’s advocating that Wyoming embrace the opportunity, and work on the challenges together.

“I remember when the saying was, ‘Please God, give me another boom. I promise not to waste it this time',” Gordon told Cowboy State Daily. “And you think back to the end of the 1990s, early 2000s, and the state was broke. We didn’t have much money. And so here we are, we have this opportunity.”

Water and power concerns are legitimate questions, Gordon said.

“These are things we can work to,” he said. “What I think is really frustrating, and your schizophrenia question is really clear, because we want to teach more CTE, we want our kids to have better jobs and all of this, but we won’t build housing they can move into. So we’re doing a great job of training Colorado, Nebraska, Utah, Idaho and Montana’s workforce … and that’s a problem.”

Done right, data centers are a chance to provide the right kind of opportunities for Wyoming’s youths, to help keep more of them in the state, and build in some diversity, while also helping to bolster legacy industries like oil and gas, as well as build new energy sectors like nuclear, he said.

“Construction will come and go,” Gordon said. “And that’s what it is with the oil field, that’s the way it is with opening a mine, and that’s the way it is with a lot of certain jobs. But the jobs that are going to be here for the long-term are steady, good-paying jobs, and ones that our kids can aspire to.”

Whether Wyoming misses this boom, or finally breaks into a cycle less dependent on the booms and busts of commodity-based industries might depend less on data centers themselves, and more on the guardrails it chooses now for water, power, and tax policy. 

It will also depend on how much change it’s willing to accept to keep its children home, and its night skies clear.

Related Digital IMG 7855 7 6 26

<title>Data Centers Test Wyoming’s Promise Not To ‘Piss Away’ The Next Boom | Cowboy State Daily</title>

The old Wyoming bumper sticker reads, “Dear God give me one more boom and I promise not to piss it all away next time.” Data centers may just be that next boom. So, how far to go in courting prosperity without losing the things that make Wyoming, Wyoming?

Data Centers Test Wyoming’s Promise Not To ‘Piss Away’ The Next Boom

Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Crime & Courts

Public Safety

A Fourth of July fundraiser concert at a Gillette bar had ended, the music was over and patrons were beginning to head home when a firework exploded outside the entrance, blowing all the fingers off one man’s hand and injuring four other people.

"I tried to light a firework and throw it, it blew up instantly," Matthew Lynch said in a public apology he issued Monday about the mishap. "People got hurt and I feel like total shit for it.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I’m sorry for being wreckless (sic) and injuring anyone.\""}]

The explosion happened around midnight early Saturday outside the Otherside Bar & Grill, where a concert raising money for a reproductive health clinic had wrapped up about 30 minutes earlier.

"I almost bled out and got life flighted to Billings,” Lynch wrote in his apology posted to Facebook. "I'm gonna be fine. I'm back home. I'm positive and feel OK, other than immense pain."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Bleeding Profusely"}]

Otherside Bar & Grill owner Chris Ingersoll described the scene to Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

"There was a gentleman with an arm injury bleeding profusely,” he said.

Ingersoll said someone — possibly one of his bartenders — applied a tourniquet before first responders arrived. 

Police officers were only about a block away and reached the scene within minutes to begin rendering aid, he said.

A man blew the fingers off his hand and injured four other people outside a Gillette bar around midnight Saturday. In a public apology, the man, who was life-flighted to Billings, said he tried to throw the firework "but it blew up instantly."

Daily Smile: Tuesday, July 7, 2026

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