It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Thursday, October 15th. I’m Mac Watson.
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A University of Wyoming graduate student is accused of poisoning her colleague, then trying to flee to China through the Los Angeles International Airport. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports 32-year-old Aili Wang was arrested, and is expected to be held in Albany County on a $15 million cash bond.
“Court documents say that they found poison in her office mate's coffee maker, that the people at the university actually tested samples from the coffee maker, and that he was having bad symptoms: numbness, tingling, lots of illness from about August onward. So they set up surveillance cameras. Multiple people did, and they also checked her card entry data according to the affidavit. And so there would be entries after midnight, video footage allegedly showing her messing around with the coffee mug or the coffee itself, and so there was also commentary in the affidavit that she was studying the same things that the alleged victim was studying before she came to the United States.”
An affidavit by University of Wyoming Police Department says a researcher with pending patents started experiencing strange symptoms in August. The man, identified as “KT,” reported symptoms of poisoning starting Aug. 10th.
Read the full story HERE.
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After surviving 34 days in Yellowstone National Park and losing 10 pounds, a 10-year-old Jack Russell terrier was safely trapped Wednesday and reunited with her family. Cowboy State Daily’s Emma Jane Jackson reports that searchers say they had only a few days before having to suspend the search for the winter.
“Katie Boucher from Norris Ark Rescue told me that the feeling of reuniting a family with their lost pet is a feeling that never gets old, and it's pure joy. I asked Katie Boucher how hard this rescue was, and she said that Luna was a feral street dog for the first year of her life, so she has the skills to survive on her own, and she wasn't necessarily running to humans for help, which made it long and hard.”
Luna escaped Sept. 10 while vacationing with her family in the Canyon Village area of Yellowstone. The family had left her in their rented cabin for an outing to Norris Geyser Basin, and after a mishap with the “Do Not Disturb” sign on the door, housekeeping staff entered the room and Luna slipped out.
Read the full story HERE.
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Teton County residents will benefit the most if Prop. 1, the 50% residential property tax cut ballot initiative, passes, data shows. Cowboy State Daily’s Clair McFarland reports that residents would save nearly 25% of projected statewide savings.
“If that 50% property tax cut passes in November, then the greatest benefit would go to people of Teton County, where the house prices are exorbitant. Think an average retail price of like $5 million as of 2025. So that's $27 million in tax breaks to Teton County people per capita. That's like $1,100, whereas in most states you're running $150 to $190 per capita in tax breaks. Bryan Miller, the chair of the Wyoming Republican Party, just said this is not a moral type of taxation, right? Because you can lose your home even once it's paid for if you don't pay taxes on it. Whereas Senator Cale Case said, ‘okay, but this kind of locally charged, locally funded, locally rooted type of taxation keeps people accountable to what's going on in their community.’”
Teton County’s $27.05 million savings figure is nearly three times greater than the next-highest Prop 1 tax break, found in Natrona County at $9.86 million. Niobrara County residents are expected to save the least, but that’s also Wyoming’s least-populous county.
Read the full story HERE.
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When even strong steel mesh didn’t work to keep an annoying raccoon out of her chimney, a Casper woman turned to a more potent weapon — the band Metallica. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that Abby Roich says, “I put a speaker in my fireplace area and just turned on some Metallica as loud as I could.”
“When she climbed onto her roof, she noticed that something had actually ripped and curled the wire away, and the raccoon was back in the chimney. After a polite neighbor offered Roich a .22, she kindly said ‘no, thank you,’ and then she did some light research and found out that raccoons don't like loud noises. So earlier this week, she put a speaker in her fireplace and started playing Metallica, the Black Album. A day later, she didn't notice any scraping or scratching, and she climbed back on the roof. Still, no sign of the raccoon. So she put a larger stone over the chimney, hoping that this time it sealed for good.”
Roich, who is Cowboy State Daily’s advertising operations coordinator, lives in an established part of town where mature trees tower over sidewalks and older homes.
Raccoons had found her chimney before. In fact, the previous owner dealt with the masked bandits before.
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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Wild-horse advocates say they'll be watching beginning Thursday when the BLM begins rounding up 1,800 mustangs from the Red Desert Complex for adoption and resale. Outdoors Reporter Mark Heinz reports the agency says it must reduce the herd to “sustainable levels” of 480-720 horses.
“One of the wild horse advocates who really isn't a fan of all of this, Carol Walker, said that there’s obviously plenty of land and food and water out there for them. But the BLM is saying that the rangeland out there is just getting too much of a strain on it. A lot of that strain is coming from the horses, so they’ve got to get the horses out of there before it gets to the point where the horses start to starve, so that's kind of the size of that controversy.”
Helicopters are the primary means of rounding up the horses — which are regarded as wild, or feral, depending upon whom you ask. Horse advocates say using low-flying choppers to stampede horses into corrals is cruel and unnecessary. The BLM and others argue that helicopter roundups are more efficient and safer for horses and humans
Read the full story HERE.
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It took a SWAT team, chemicals, and a K-9 on Saturday to arrest a Gillette man accused of stalking a woman he had already done prison time for stalking. Cowboy State Daily’s Greg Johnson reports police say 47-year-old Tony Corbett also threatened a shootout with police and called the woman 76 times in three hours.
“He was listening to dispatch, and so he was kind of alerted they were coming out. So he went to his house, but even while the police were at her house taking her report, police say that he continued to constantly call her and text her and Snapchat her while they were there. They're watching it come through. They went over to his house with the SWAT team and he was uncooperative, then fortunately there was no shootout. But he was pretty much uncooperative, resisted the entire way, didn't comply with their commands, and finally, to come out, they put a chemical bomb into his house. Forced him out. But he still wasn't obeying their commands or anything, and so finally they set a canine on him, and that's how they finally apprehended him.”
Corbett was charged with felony stalking, along with misdemeanor possession of meth and interference with a peace officer. He had his first court appearance Tuesday, where a Campbell County Circuit Court judge gave him a bond of $50,000 cash or surety and set an Oct. 20 preliminary hearing.
Read the full story HERE.
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Eleven days after a fire destroyed a Big Horn County couple's shop, Steva Dooley says they are overwhelmed by community support. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports they say their 52-year-old truck with 400,000+ miles was the most painful to lose but “it's all stuff.”
“The Worland Fire Department is saying this happened as a result of a faulty electrical box on a piece of equipment inside the shop. The Bighorn County couple who have been married over 50 years said they built the shop 43 years ago. It's used to house some of their work equipment, but also a lifetime's worth of tractors they've collected over the years and old vehicles. Steva Dooley says that it was particularly hard to see the old red pickup truck they had purchased when they started dating and had been driving around for 53 years go up in flames.”
Basin, Burlington, and Greybull firefighters converged on the Lane 40 property. Steva estimated that 30 to 40 responders eventually were working on the blaze. Steva tells Cowboy State Daily that the loss looks different to her after watching dozens of firefighters she has known since they were children battle the flames without anyone getting hurt.
Read the full story HERE.
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An illegal controlled burn beneath a high-voltage power line in Weston County on Tuesday took firefighters eight hours to put out. Cowboy State Daily’s Kate Meadows reports that fire officials say the heat could have damaged the line, while smoke and flames created a potential electrocution hazard.
“So in Weston County, the burn ban has been in effect since the end of March. That is earlier than normal. However, a lot of people who are accustomed to having controlled burns this time of year are still lighting things on fire, and in their worlds, it's just a normal part of life. And that is what happened in this case. It was illegal because this ban is in effect. By the time he got the fire lit, it was kind of too late for him to be able to put it out himself, and that's when the fire department was called, and Powder River Energy came out because the fire was right under, directly under a pretty big power line. The landowner was not cited for the illegal burn. Weston County Sheriff's Deputy Dan Fields said that the deputy decided to use this as a teaching moment instead.”
The fire involved a large pile of household trash, old construction materials and other junk, Weston County Fire Protection District Warden Daniel Tysdal told Cowboy State Daily.
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.
