It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, September 3rd. I’m Mac Watson.
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A Wyoming pilot and father of three remains missing after a devastating Grand Canyon flash flood over the weekend. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that his wife and children are holding out hope that Tim Smith will be found.
“53-year-old Timothy Smith was hiking with two lifelong friends from Texas in the Grand Canyon on Saturday when a flood swept through Bright Angel Creek, killing his companions. By Sunday morning, Smith was reported missing. 53-year-old Timothy Smith was hiking with two lifelong friends from Texas in the Grand Canyon on Saturday when a flood swept through Bright Angel Creek, killing his companions. By Sunday morning, Smith was reported missing. The National Park Service is leading this search with the assistance from the Coconino County Search and Rescue as well as the U.S. Border Patrol. Following the flood, initially 15 people were reported missing. Smith remains the only person who has yet to be found.”
Timothy Allen Smith, from Star Valley Ranch in western Wyoming, was hiking with longtime friends 46-year-old John Giusti, and 42-year-old Brent Rosenkranz, both of Granbury, Texas, when the flood struck Saturday afternoon.
Read the full story HERE.
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The driver of a runaway dump truck on Teton Pass that killed two people July 7th faces a pair of homicide by vehicle charges and could get him up to two years, so say court documents filed Tuesday. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports that troopers say he bypassed a runaway truck escape.
“The big takeaway from the affidavit that the trooper wrote about this case is that, and he said it multiple times in here that, in his opinion, this could have all been avoided. That people didn't have to die. That this truck driver could could have heeded some of the the warnings when his when he first started noticing some of the signs that his brakes might be failing that you got to pull over and that just past and that the the crash happened just past an escape ramp an area where trucks go in case their brakes do go out. Some people may wonder why does it take so long to initiate charges? In this case outlined in the affidavit, it takes a while to recreate that and to to really put together the picture. This trooper really put together a good picture of the series of events, what happened, who got hit first, and who got knocked into who? It was quite a chain reaction.”
22-year-old Laiton George McMinn of Idaho faces a pair of misdemeanor homicide by vehicle charges. The two charges have maximum sentences of up to one year in jail and a fine of up to $2,000. That puts the maximum potential penalty, if convicted and given consecutive sentences, of up to two years and $4,000.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Johnson County rancher who tried to steal an elk head and antlers from hunters who helicoptered onto public land adjacent to his property last year says he was harassed and received death threats following the incident. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that rancher Brett DeLaap says he has since apologized.
“I talked to Brett and got Brett's side of the story, and yeah, he was very upfront and open about it. Basically he said, ‘I went and grabbed that elk head just out of pure emotion. I was upset at the time. Those guys were irritating me.’ It was basically a totally emotional decision that he regrets and he recognizes is wrong. So he had no problem with facing the charges and paying the fine. There's still some other things that really stick in his cry. I think you know that that whole incident was so hugely publicized, and he said he got a lot of shade from that.”
DeLapp was later charged with theft. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor theft charge and on April 29 was fined $220, according to Johnson County Circuit Court records.
Read the full story HERE.
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A 36-year-old Arizona man suspected of kidnapping a 15-year-old Sundance girl was captured hundreds of miles away in South Dakota less than five hours after she was reported missing. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that authorities credit license plate technology for the quick arrest.
“Court records show that 36-year-old Dalton Renollet met up with a 15-year-old girl from Sundance, where he picked her up and was driving her across state lines. Initially, investigators thought he was going to his home in Arizona, but police in Utah were also looking for him, and it was cameras that were able to track his vehicle across state lines, and he was apprehended in South Dakota. Investigators say when they stopped Renollet, he admitted to having sexual contact with a minor who he knew was only 15 years old. He is now being charged with sexual contact with a minor. But Wyoming authorities say that he will at some point be brought back to Wyoming, where he is facing additional charges with federal charges coming as well.”
When a 15-year-old Sundance girl disappeared Monday morning, the Crook County Sheriff's Office and Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation had been investigating concerns the girl was being groomed by an adult believed to live outside of Wyoming. She was reported missing around 9:55a.m. Monday, she was reported missing, by 2:26 p.m. — just four hours and 31 minutes after the missing-person report — the girl was found safe in South Dakota.
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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The Wyoming Judicial Branch’s former operating system fell prey to a hack that could have lifted personal data about people involved in court cases from 2015-2025. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that the Wyoming Judicial Branch first learned about the breach in mid-to-late July
“The Wyoming judicial branch, its operating system that it recently retired but had for like 10 years, was compromised in a cybersecurity breach, and the judicial branch believes that that was names, addresses, dates of birth. The actual breach, according to the vendor West Publishing Corporation, that suffered the breach, also included things like social security numbers. The Wyoming judicial branch indicated that wasn't part of our Wyoming portion, and several states were involved. The judicial branch believes that its own systems and indeed its current database are fine. They believe that the things that are in operation now are perfectly secure, and that people should still have faith in the judicial branch.”
West Publishing Corporation’s subsidiary C-Track released a statement saying it discovered “unauthorized activity by a third party” on June 30th. It “promptly” launched an investigation that included experts and law enforcement and “immediately took steps to contain the activity and secure its environment,” that’s according to their statement.
Read the full story HERE.
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After initially pushing back Wednesday, Platte County commissioners unanimously OK'd a request to rezone 5,344 acres of private ranchland in Goshen Hole for a utility-scale data center and energy complex. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that the meeting, at times, was tense.
“The meeting lasted almost four hours and included as much, if not more, back and forth between commissioners and the developer as public comment. Project developer Ian Marcus faced a barrage of questions, especially from Platte County Commissioner Ian Jalovich, who said, "We don't know much at all about this rezoning from agriculture to industrial? We've never done anything like this, and especially to this size. The meeting was contentious and it grew especially tense when commissioners felt like they weren't getting specific answers and the developer seemed like he felt like he was giving those specific answers. So at one point, Jalovich said, ‘I'm very concerned that you guys don't know what you're going to do, and so how are we supposed to know what you're going to do?’”
The property, privately owned, is located northeast of Wheatland near the Platte-Goshen county line in an area known as Goshen Hole. The proposed industrial designation would allow the property to be used for utility-scale energy generation, energy storage and a data center campus.
Read the full story HERE.
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A Gillette woman accused of pocketing more than $8,000 worth of fraudulent returns from a local liquor store denies stealing from her former employer, saying it was another worker. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports store video captured some of the alleged thefts.
“This person is accused of basically doing a return on them without the items being returned. So she prints out the receipt, puts it in as a return, and even if it was on somebody's credit card or something like that, it didn't get charged back to the credit card. She took the cash. She put it as a cash return, so she would take the cash out. Something of note is that, one day she's accused of taking more than $800 in these returns.”
In the meantime, Miakoda Morris, born in 2002, could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted of felony theft, according to charging documents filed in Campbell County Circuit Court on Tuesday.
Read the full story HERE.
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Now that pennies are going extinct, Wyoming legislators are considering rules outlining how to round up — or down — to the nearest nickel. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that some states have a Wild West approach, letting businesses choose for themselves as long as they’re consistent.
“There have been around 20 states that have passed some kind of law, whether it's round this way or hey, businesses just be consistent and you won't get sued. So the Department of Revenue was like, when you want to take a look at this, and they did go ahead and ask for a bill draft that would go one and two cents over goes back down to the flat number, three and four cents over goes up to the nickel, six and seven cents over goes down to the nickel, and eight and nine cents over goes up to the next dime. But there's caveats on there that they're looking at where potentially it would only apply to state agencies and businesses could still decide for themselves and still be kind of a Wild West.”
The U.S Mint’s 2024 report showed an $85.3 million price tag to build 3.2 billion pennies – a mint cost of 3.7 cents per coin.
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.
