It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Friday, September 18th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A Rawlins couple racing to the hospital to have their baby made it only to a parking lot in a Wamsutter truck stop. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that dad said seven minutes after calling 911, the baby was delivered.
“Catherine and Kyle Blake were rushing to get to the Rock Springs Hospital when her water broke outside of Wamsutter. Catherine at one point looked at Kyle and said, "We're not going to make it. You need to pull over right here. So he got into a Loves parking lot. The baby was born with the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck, but Kyle was able to talk with dispatch and quickly address the situation and get the the umbilical cord off and rub the baby until it started breathing. As soon as their son started crying, the couple felt relieved.”
Max Hemi Blake came into the world in a Ram 2500 with a Hemi engine, so really, what else were his parents supposed to name him? The 6-pound, 11-ounce Wyoming boy was born Aug. 8th in the parking lot of the Love’s Travel Stop in Wamsutter after his parents realized they weren’t going to make it to the hospital in Rock Springs.
Read the full story HERE.
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Torrington residents are getting sticker shock from their electricity bills, which have jumped nearly 190% seemingly overnight after a change in the town’s power provider. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports that after the region's provider switched from the Western Area Power Administration to the Southwest Power Pool, one woman saw her bill shoot up more than $100 dollars in one month.
“I talked to one, a mother of five, who said that she almost cried when she opened up her electricity bill and saw that it was $100 more than usual. The city said that because they switched providers, it resulted in a 189% increase, or $800,000 overall, and they're trying to get to the bottom of why this happened. We reached out to both providers, and they did not respond to a request for comment.”
The City of Torrington released a statement saying, “Torrington and its wholesale power provider Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska are working diligently together to discern the cause of the sharp increase.”
Read the full story HERE.
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A bull elk in Estes Park, Colorado, has been strutting around town with an antler stuck in its neck after a fight during rutting season. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that elk sometimes get their antler racks entangled in a fight, but one ecologist said he's "never seen anything like that."
“Two bulls got into a mating season fight there. And one of them, then right about here in the neck of the elk, an antler tine, jabbed in and snapped off, and so now there's this bull elk running around Estes Park Park with this gory antler point dangling from its neck. Well, not really gory because there's no blood spurting out of it. I talked to a photographer that kind of knows that elk and took some video of him and said he appears to be doing fine. And one of the biologists I talked to said ‘yeah, because they've got a lot of you know hide and fur and muscle in there he said as long as that antler point went into just muscle tissue and didn't cause any nerve damage.”
Elk have entered the rut, or mating season, during which bulls can get into vicious fights as they try to lay claim to harems of cows.
Read the full story HERE.
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After nearly three weeks of intensive searching in a flood-ravaged part of the Grand Canyon, Wyoming hiker Timothy Smith's body has been recovered and identified. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports his wife says, “We no longer have to wait.”
“Carrie Smith confirmed that her husband had been found on Thursday morning, although it wasn't the news she was hoping for, it does bring closure to their family, knowing that he has been recovered. Cowboy State Daily spoke to a retired park ranger who used to work in that area, and she said that it can take so long because of all the debris that gets washed downstream, and there were parts of bridges, trees, plants, rocks, boulders, and then search and rescue teams go through, and they have to sift through that, which is also very dangerous for them as well.”
Smith, who was 53, was a pilot who had recently moved to Star Valley. His remains were recovered Monday near Crystal Rapid on the Colorado River, roughly 10 miles downstream from Phantom Ranch.
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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In a three-justice majority opinion, the Wyoming Supreme Court ruled Thursday the Legislature has been violating the state Constitution by shortchanging public schools. However, Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports the state can't be forced to buy more computers or pay for school lunches.
“There was a dissenting opinion by Justice Kerry Jo Gray, saying that for the judicial branch to interpret funding levels under such a strict standard-not just funding disparities from kid to kid, town to town, but actual funding levels-is basically judicial overreach and digging into the legislature's policymaking realm.”
Drawing from the Wyoming Constitution's requirement that public education be complete and uniform, the decision imposes a level of school funding on the Wyoming Legislature that courts will review under the most protective constitutional standard in the law, “strict scrutiny.”
Read the full story HERE.
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Wyoming Game and Fish shelled out nearly $1 million to compensate ranchers for livestock killed by grizzly bears in 2025, which is nearly double the agency’s animal-damage budget. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports that whether delisting grizzlies would help is up for debate.
“I talked to Senator Larry Hicks. He's a legislator who's been involved in a lot of wildlife policy or legislation involving Game and Fish, and I said, ‘Well, what happens when they go over that $500,000 budget?’ He said, ‘Well, the department just has to keep absorbing the cost, because according to changes they made about a decade ago,’ as we've said numerous times, the Game and Fish really likes to stay away from getting any money directly from the legislature. As far as what to do about the expense, he argues what a lot of people argue: get the grizzly bears delisted, we can maybe trim costs.”
Factoring in damage claims for other species, plus additional costs for preventive measures and other expenses, the wildlife-damage program cost $3,294,150, according to the Game and Fish's FY 2025 report.
Read the full story HERE.
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Plainclothes ICE agents zip-tied a woman at a Jackson bus stop Tuesday, putting a spotlight on friction between ICE and local law enforcement. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the mayor says, “A federal agency coming into my community in plain clothes, unannounced, is unacceptable.”
“Jackson Mayor Arne Jorgensen criticized the way that the operation unfolded. He said that ICE agents coming into the community unannounced without talking to the sheriffs or the police department beforehand is unacceptable. The Department of Homeland Security gave Cowboy State Daily an extensive statement defending how the operations unfolded. They said that being detained is optional, and they're encouraging immigrants who have overstayed their visa to turn themselves in.”
The Department of Homeland Security reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Feride Bardakci on Tuesday during what the agency calls a “targeted enforcement operation” in Jackson. DHS said Bardakci entered the United States legally near Atlanta, Georgia, on June 13, 2023, with authorization to remain until April 1, 2024.
Read the full story HERE.
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When Flock wouldn’t come and take down 10 license plate reader cameras the company had installed, a Colorado sheriff did it himself. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that the Moffat County Sheriff's Office says, “Our patience has officially run out.”
“Moffat County Sheriff Chip McIntyre announced on August 13th that the sheriff's office was no longer using Flock and they were going to discontinue the contract.As of this week, Flock has not come to pick up the cameras. The cameras remain at the Moffat County Sheriff's Office. flock systems being left up after contracts have been canceled is getting to be more and more common. There are other communities where officials have had to wait for Flock to collect its equipment. In Syracuse, New York, they waited more than three months after ending their agreement with Flock for Flock to come and get the cameras, other communities are resorting to black trash bags and putting black trash bags over the cameras while they wait for the company to come get them.”
The sheriff acknowledged Flock cameras were a useful investigative tool, but said the county needed to consider the technology’s cost, how often it was used and how the information collected in the community was stored, shared and controlled.
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.
