County 17

NOTE: The following story contains injury photos that could be upsetting to some readers. Discretion is advised.

CASPER, Wyo. — Lauren Lein was in the stands with the rest of the crowd when she saw her son, Carter, go down on the ice. Then, he immediately got back up and was holding his neck, the fear in his eyes unmistakable.

A freak accident involving Carter and a player from the opposite team led to that player’s ice skate cutting Carter’s neck. Even with a neck guard, the injury was a serious one.

Without it, Carter could have been killed.

In August 2024, USA Hockey implemented a mandate that required all hockey players and on-ice officials — aged 18 years and under — to wear a neck guard at all times while on the ice. The mandate was put in place after the death of former NHL and European hockey player Adam Johnson in an accident similar to Carter’s.

On Oct. 28, 2023, in front of 8,000 spectators, Johnson collided with a player on the opposite team and fell toward the ice, at which point another opponent inadvertently “kicked up” his left skate, which Johnson landed on. BBC Sports reported that Johnson got up and attempted to skate back toward his team’s bench before collapsing. In an act of solidarity, Johnson’s teammates formed a protective circle around him, shielding him from onlookers.

Johnson was rushed to a local medical facility, where he was pronounced dead.

USA Today reported that, prior to his death, Johnson had purchased an engagement ring that he planned to propose to his longtime girlfriend with.

Johnson’s death prompted an investigation and examination of player safety in the world of hockey, which resulted in several mandates to wear neck guards. In addition to the USA Hockey mandate, the AHL requires all players and on-ice officials to wear neck guards, as do all of the Canada Hockey Leagues, the English Ice Hockey Association and others.

It was a mandate made too late, but it was one that, quite possibly, saved Carter Lein’s life.

The similarities between Johnson’s death and her own son’s accident were enough to bring tears to Lauren’s eyes and a chill that ran up her spine when she detailed the incident to Oil City News.

“This time last year, players weren’t wearing neck guards, which is a scary thought,” Lauren said. “But I saw Carter go down, and right then the other team had scored a goal, so we were all just kind of distracted. But then I saw Carter on his knees, kind of holding his neck, and I saw him skating off the ice without some of his gear. He left his gear on the ice and started skating toward the bench. So I got up and started walking very slowly, watching Carter.”

Lauren said that she kept walking toward the lobby, en route to the players’ bench. She still didn’t know exactly what was happening, but she knew her boy was hurt. She knew it before a medic confirmed it, in the way that only a mother can know certain things.

Her husband, Nick, who is also one of the coaches of the Casper Oilers, put his arms up in the air and asked for a medic.

“Is there a doctor in the house” has become a cliché line, but that’s exactly what was needed. As luck would have it, there were many medics in attendance that night.

“Thankfully, we had a lot of parents and grandparents in the medical field that were at the game,” she said, “so he started calling to the audience, saying that they needed help. And I saw the team’s trainer, who is also the father of our team’s goalie, get over there. When I saw Nick call for help, I started running.”

Lauren said that the thoughts going through her mind as she ran to the team’s bench are blurry. Her adrenaline was high. She yelled for somebody to call 911 but, she says, four or five people were already doing so.

“A parent in front of me started running toward the bench too, because she was also a nurse,” Lauren said. “She didn’t know how she could help, but everyone was just kind of running to help. When I got to the bench, one of the coaches was clearing the players out of the way so we could get closer to Carter. The team manager, Heather Grossman, was on the right side of Carter, on the bench, holding the right side of his neck, and Clay Wilson, the team trainer who was also in the medical field, had taken off his own sweatshirt and was holding it to Carter’s neck to hold pressure.”

Lauren finally got to the bench, and was immediately placed in front of her boy.

“They just guided me to sit right in front of Carter and just kind of talk to him and keep him calm,” she remembered. “He was being so calm, but he was also crying and saying, ‘I’m so scared, I’m so scared,’ because he remembered vividly the hockey player that passed away from a neck injury like this.”

Johnson came to Carter’s mind immediately, the boy said.

“I was facing the puck and I did trip my opponent, accidentally,” Carter said, “and when I tripped him, he was going down and while he was going down, his skate came up and got me good in the neck. I didn’t really feel it because of adrenaline, but I knew something happened.”

The blade of his opponent’s ice skate had lacerated his throat.

“I put my hand on my neck, skated over to the bench and I dropped my gloves and was yelling to open the door cause I got cut in the neck,” he continued. “My dad — he’s one of the coaches — he saw me and knew immediately what happened, so he put his arms up and was yelling for a doctor, and then everyone jumped in in a millisecond. Everyone was asking me questions; they were holding my neck, they were yelling, they were screaming, and I heard the buzzer.”

Carter said that his mind immediately jumped to Adam Johnson, and that thought — more than the actual cut — is what scared him the most.

“Am I going to die?” Carter remembered thinking. “I’m scared. Like, ‘What do I do?’ I started thinking of places that I wanted to be other than that place. I was trying not to focus on it, but it was hard because of the pain.”

The right people were in the right place at the right time, and they were able to apply pressure to Carter’s neck until the ambulance arrived, which, Lauren said, only took a few minutes.

“We had, I believe, 20-plus calls that went into dispatch for 911,” she stated. “One of Nick’s former coworkers is a deputy at the jail; he ran out to his truck and got a medical bag, which he brought in to get gauze to apply pressure until EMTs got there. And thankfully, the hospital was just two blocks away from the ice arena and EMTs and firefighters got there within minutes — I’d say two or three minutes.”

Time, as it tends to do in situations like these, both slowed down and sped up, Lauren said.

“It was amazing how so many people leapt into action,” she said. “And as a parent, Nick and I — we were there to keep Carter calm, but you just move into survival mode. You don’t have time to really feel, like, ‘This is my child, this is terrifying.’ You just have to act. You have to do what you’re being told to do. You have to keep him calm. You just have to survive in the moment, instead of feeling it, or you’ll completely lose it.”

Kevin Anderson, head coach of the Casper Oilers 12U team, did his best to keep his team — and the team members’ parents — calm as well.

“Obviously, Nick was with Carter, so from that point I took on the role of just clearing our kids off the bench,” Anderson said, “so that they had plenty of room to work. And I didn’t really want the kids to be seeing what was going on. We were just trying to keep trauma at a minimum.”

Anderson said that while he heard some complaints at first about having to wear neck guards, he thinks those complaints will disappear now, for the most part.

“Obviously the protective equipment is there for a reason,” he said. “Sometimes it’s not always the most comfortable stuff to wear, but it’s put on for a reason and things like this really open your eyes as to how quickly freak accidents can happen. So you follow those guidelines, the rules that have been put in place, because they help you. Had Carter not been wearing that neck guard, we could be looking at a much different situation here.”

In a different town, or a different setting, with different people, this accident could have torpedoed into bedlam. However, the parents, staff and players all kept calm, and everybody did what they needed to do. Once EMTs arrived, they took Carter to the ambulance, and the rest of the spectators let him know that he was strong, that he was loved and that he wasn’t alone.

“When he was getting wheeled out of the arena on the stretcher, you hear the crowd just go wild for him,” Lauren shared. “Like, ‘We love you, Carter’ and clapping. It was just incredible. The whole crowd, our fans, the Park City fans — everybody just erupted for him. It was incredible.”

Speaking of incredible, Lauren said that her husband — the love of her life — was just as responsible for taking care of Carter as anybody else.

“Nick has been playing hockey for 30 years,” she beamed. “He’s been a coach of Carter’s for a couple of years now. And when he saw Carter coming off the ice, he didn’t know what happened so he told Carter to remove his hand so Nick could look, and that’s when Nick saw the gash. And he jumped into complete action. Nick’s able to kind of reflect back on it now, and it’s hitting him very hard because he was the first person to see it. And it’s not just seeing that kind of injury in person, or seeing it happen to a player that you’re coaching. It’s your own child, your own son that’s bleeding from the neck. So it hit Nick really hard, but he was able to jump into action, calling for people, applying pressure before anyone else, directing people to do things. Everything that he was supposed to do, he did.”

Much like the neck guard, Nick’s actions — and the actions of everybody else — saved Carter’s life.

“This was one of those situations where you hear it happening, but you don’t think it could ever happen to you until it does,” Lauren said, “and that’s our biggest thing; we just want people to know that this little piece of equipment that may seem super annoying to people and may seem like just another thing that they have to worry about before a game — it literally saved Carter’s life. The EMTs, the nurses on scene, Dr. Duette, the ER doctor, everyone said that it saved his life because it was about an inch away from his artery, and if he hadn’t been wearing the neck guard, [the skate] would have gotten it.”

Austin Lee, the club coach of the Casper Amateur Hockey Club, was quick to thank the decision that was made by USA Hockey.

“I’m so happy that USA Hockey made its recent rule change, mandating the use of neck guards in youth hockey in the United States,” Lee stated. “The game of hockey moves at an incredibly high speed and accidents can happen fast. As a coach, this type of injury is your worst nightmare and I cannot tell you how proud I am of our coaching staff and first responders who managed this incident. Although an injury still occurred, the protection provided by the neck guard kept this from being a more serious and life-threatening injury. I’m so grateful that the equipment served its purpose and that my player is going to be OK because of it.”

Nick and Lauren are grateful, too — for the neck guard, for the medics and maybe even for a little bit of goodwill from the universe.

“As a player, you just never think something like that is going to happen to you,” Nick stated. “And then, when it comes to coaching and having your own kid and other people’s kids out there, it’s everybody’s worst fear. But I’m super grateful that this mandate has been implemented.”

Carter said that the injury was scary but that he was mostly OK. When asked if he saw himself playing hockey again, the hesitation in his voice was notable — and understandable.

“I’m still thinking about it,” Carter said. “Like, when I was in the hospital, I was telling my parents I never wanted to play again. I didn’t want to do anything like that. But today, I’m really stuck because just a few days before, in school, I had to write a little poem, and I said that if an injury happened it would ruin my whole dreams. And that was only like two days before it happened. So it’s just…I don’t know yet.”

Both of Carter’s parents understand his hesitation, and they’ll support any decision he makes. In the grand scheme of things, hockey is just a game. But that game almost cost them their son’s life, and they’re just happy that he’s OK. They’re happy and they’re grateful because they still get to hug their boy at night. They get to have more birthdays and more Christmases. They get to see their boy grow up, and that’s more important than any game, any sport.

“We have insane gratitude for the Casper Oilers program,” Lauren said. “The Casper Oilers players and parents and coaches for making sure that all the kids were wearing neck guards — we’re thankful to all of them. And the hospital staff. We just want this to bring more attention to how important this piece of equipment is. I would argue that it’s one of the most important pieces of equipment, and now, we will thank God and the universe and everybody for the rest of our life for this piece of equipment. “

Carter agreed, but he wanted to thank a few more people as well.

“A lot of my teammates were really, really good teammates,” he said. “Like, they didn’t want to play after that, after seeing a teammate go down like that. And one of my teammates, his name is Jackson Calanchini — a couple kids told me that he taped my number on his jersey, and I thought that was really, really cool.”

CASPER, Wyo. — Yellowstone National Park released body camera footage from a July 4, 2024, officer-involved shooting at Canyon Village, according to a press release from the Park on Thursday.

The briefing video shows the significant sections of the body cam footage from some of the involved law enforcement officers, in efforts to help community members gain a better understanding of what occurred.

The video is part of the National Park Service’s established protocol regarding officer-involved shootings.

The suspect, Samson Lucas Bariah Fussner, 28 — was shot and killed.

This incident is still under investigation.

The investigation includes the actions taken by NPS law enforcement officers and is being led by the FBI.

All information in the community briefing video is based on the details currently available.

Some images and audio in this video have been altered or concealed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

This video of an officer-involved shooting contains graphic content and strong language. Viewer discretion is advised.

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — After nearly a decade, the Cheyenne Police Department has arrested a suspect in the 2015 double homicide at The Coin Shop. This morning, with assistance from the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office in California, detectives apprehended Douglas Smith, 68, of McCloud, California. Smith now faces two counts of first-degree murder.

On July 20, 2015, officers responded to a robbery and shooting at 510 W. Lincolnway. Inside, they found George Manley, 76, and Dwight Brockman, 67, both deceased from gunshot wounds. The case has since remained unsolved, despite extensive investigative efforts, according to a press release by the CPD.

In 2023, Cheyenne police revisited the evidence with new technologies.

“Three years ago, when I was hired as Chief of Police, I became aware of the homicide at The Coin Shop and decided to make this a priority,” Chief Mark Francisco said. “Cases like this can be very challenging with many layers of evidence. Our detectives have been diligently working for almost a decade, and, through detailed analysis, have been able to thoughtfully re-examine the evidence in ways that bring those responsible to justice.”

Since the case reopened, detectives have invested over 1,500 hours. They collaborated with various agencies, including the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service. The cost of the renewed investigation totaled approximately $11,106, according to Francisco.

Detectives believe Smith, the initial 911 caller, killed Manley and Brockman. The case is now with the Laramie County District Attorney’s Office.

“Strong partnerships have led to this arrest,” Francisco said. “This is a step closer to closure for our community.”

Detective James Pendleton was the lead detective on the case for this development, but Francisco emphasized there were a lot of people involved in the case. Over the years there have been five case detectives and one civilian assigned. Pendleton did not speak at the arrest announcement.

“Somebody gets handed the case and that was him,” Francisco said.

Laramie County District Attorney Sylvia Hackl expressed her gratitude for the investigators’ work.

“I appreciate the diligent work of our investigators who have brought this suspect to justice,” Hackl said.

Hackl also announced that Bill Edelman of the District Attorney’s office will be the chief prosecutor on the case.

Some details are still being kept from the public to preserve the integrity of the investigation. Anyone with further information is urged to contact the Cheyenne Police Department or Silent Witness.

View the press conference below.

By Katie Klingsporn, WyoFile

A black bear padding through the forest freezes. It looks up briefly, then something spurs it to turn and bolt in the other direction. 

That something is the sound of hikers — a recording of women’s voices in conversation as they walk along a trail. It is emitted by one of many motion-triggered speakers scientists set up in the Bridger-Teton National Forest as part of a study on the impacts of outdoor recreation sounds on wildlife. And as this grainy game camera footage shows, even sounds that appear benign to us humans can disturb animals. 

As Wyoming outdoor recreation grows in popularity, so do its impacts — ranging from rogue trails to littered landscapes and critter conflicts. 

Such anecdotes are nothing new. But now a growing body of research is supporting their validity. It underscores the challenges of managing landscapes for the benefits to users and communities while preserving the resource — and comes as the state is trying to define its approach to the burgeoning outdoor recreation economy and determine its criteria for  granting outdoor recreation funds. 

“It’s our responsibility and really our need to preserve these areas so that outdoor recreation can continue to flourish,” said Kyle Elmquist with the Wyoming Outdoor Council. If recreation’s effects start to negatively impact wildlife and biodiversity, he said, “then we’re kind of losing the outdoor in outdoor recreation.”

U.S. Forest Service Research Ecologist Mark Ditmer is one of the scientists attempting to quantify how the sounds of outdoor recreation affect wildlife in the Bridger-Teton. He has been working with forest officials as they embark on a forest plan revision, he said, and one of the agency’s goals is to better understand increased visitation and concentrated use. The sound study spawned from those goals.

The project entails taking recordings of recreation — such as mountain bikes zipping by, off-road vehicles motoring along, a trail runner jogging or hikers walking — pairing them with motion-sensing technology and placing them near game trails through the forest. There is also a “control” recording of nature sounds. 

As an animal walks by, it triggers the sound and then cameras capture the creature’s reaction. The project also records bird vocalizations for analysis of how recreation noises affect avian behavior. Ditmer and research biologist Kathy Zeller with the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute initiated the study last summer with eight sites; it is ongoing. 

It sets out to answer several questions, Zeller said, primarily: “Do mammals have increased stress or vigilance or other types of potentially negative behaviors when they hear recreation noise?” 

They also want to know if birds avoid noisy areas, if animal communities change group behavior and what types of sounds are most impactful.

Ditmer and Zeller are only partway through data collection and haven’t quantified responses, but Zeller said they’ve seen many spooked animals — and one activity appears to be particularly startling.

“We’ve found that mountain biking with a large group size tended to result in a higher probability of wildlife fleeing a site compared with the other sound treatments,” Zeller said.  

It also appears the nature noises prompt little to no response, Ditmer said. “So I think we can say at this point that playing a noise from the speaker is not necessarily the trigger of the response, it is what is contained within the soundbite itself,” he said. 

Those observations align with a 2016 study co-conducted by Courtney Larson, a Wyoming conservation scientist with The Nature Conservancy. Larson and her co-authors reviewed scientific literature regarding the impacts of non-motorized, non-consumptive recreation on wildlife. Some 93% of the nearly 300 studies that assessed recreation’s wildlife effects found at least one significant effect, most of which were negative, according to their findings. 

Those effects can look like habitat fragmentation, or animals spending more time being vigilant and less time feeding, Larson said during a presentation in Laramie this spring. Awareness seems to be growing and people have good knowledge of times of year or places where wildlife are particularly vulnerable, she added. But questions remain on the varying sensitivity of species as well as how much recreation a landscape can hold. 

“And so there’s really a lot of complication here,” Larson said. However, she said, her personal belief is that “we should have some areas that are just for wildlife.”

Recent research has also attempted to capture data on other recreation impacts. The company onX, which creates outdoor mapping apps for hunters and other recreationists, partnered with a recreation-focused research firm to survey 2,200 outdoor enthusiasts in late 2022 to determine what booming popularity means for public lands and experiences.  

Deteriorating experiences on public lands are on the rise, their study found. “So some of the biggest changes to our outdoor experiences are those caused by the very people that are enjoying the outdoors,” said Becky Marcelliano, onX stewardship marketing manager. Nearly two-thirds of the respondents cited overcrowding as negatively affecting their time in nature, for example. Outdoor recreation participation hit a record high nationwide in 2022, according to the 2023 participation trends report from Outdoor Industry Association. 

​​Perhaps the biggest takeaway, she said, is a so-called “stewardship gap.” Though industry data shows 77% of outdoor enthusiasts make 12 or more outings a year, only 19% commit to a stewardship activity in that same timeframe, she said. 

“Which means that less than one in five are doing the lion’s share of the work to protect and restore our public lands,” Marcelliano said. 

Outdoor recreation impacts have been a topic of concern as the state moves to embrace the growing sector. Wyoming created a trust fund this spring to generate grants for trail building, camping infrastructure and other such developments, but lawmakers still need to approve governance language before the funds can be disbursed. 

The Legislature’s Travel, Recreation and Wildlife Committee is slated to take up the matter when it convenes Aug. 10. During the creation of the trust fund, several groups, including Wyoming Outdoor Council, testified that impacts to wildlife and other resources should be thoroughly vetted before a project is granted. 

The trick, said WOC Public Lands and Wildlife Advocate Meghan Riley, is ensuring people can access recreation, “but make sure that we do it in a way that doesn’t adversely impact wildlife or kind of that sense of solitude that you can still get in Wyoming.”

A lot of outdoor recreation development protocols already have safeguards in place, said Grace Templeton with Wyoming Pathways, including requiring a rigorous federal environmental review process. 

It’s also important to acknowledge that all human activities have some kind of impact on the natural environment, Wyoming Outdoor Recreation Office Manager Patrick Harrington said. 

“And so I think our office comes with the perspective that the things we do to develop our recreational resources, do have a potential to have negative wildlife impacts and other negative impacts as well,” Harrington said. “We agree that we want to minimize wildlife impacts at every turn.”

The office’s guiding principle in that vein, he said, is to educate, disperse and concentrate — teach users stewardship principles and design the experience in a way to encourage users onto landscapes that can support them and away from sensitive places. 

When it comes to the “stewardship gap,” Harrington said, he believes recreation can actually be utilized to create more stewards — particularly considering onX’s finding that Gen Z and millennials are particularly engaged in stewardship actions. “We need to build recreational opportunities that are sustainable, and allow people to engage with a minimal impact and then use that to catalyze these efforts towards conservation.”

The concept of “loved to death” is coming up more and more, said Era Aranow, a legislative advocate with WOC. “As a state, we need to figure out how we’re going to support and fund the management of the places that we create or are created, because the people just want to be out there.”

This article was originally published by WyoFile and is republished here with permission. WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.

By Vince Tropea, County10.com

DUBOIS, Wyo. — Denita Wolf shared the following Ring doorbell camera footage, captured the morning of January 8 on S. 1st Street in Dubois, of a mountain lion making its way across the yard.

Leigh Lassle has a lot of projects. He’s climbing Devils Tower at least once a month for 100 consecutive months. This January will be number 100. He has a Harley in his garage he built from scratch. He has a dirt bike he takes out for endurance riding. He’s working on a network marketing business selling health supplements. And he teaches martial arts classes to kids and adults in his home dojo. And that’s in addition to his full-time job with Campbell County. What sounds like another testosterone-fueled Alpha male constantly trying to outperform others, Lassle interest in achievement is more about personal achievement and the thrill overcoming obstacles to realize his own potential. He then spends a lot of time trying to show others how to overcome their own limits. I met Lassle while trying to do a story on his 100 Devils Tower climbs, and he talked me into climbing the tower myself. And I succeeded, having never done any real rock climbing in my life. And realizing that potential became a tool I can carry with me in everything I do from here on out. Lassle sat down with me to talk about goal setting, rock climbing, endurance racing, and how he overcame dyslexia to achieve the goal of getting his diploma.

Phil Christopherson, CEO of Energy Capital Economic Development, started out as a truck driver within a family business. He eventually moved into engineering. While he was trying to help improve a community in Washington, he ran up against county commissioners who were largely unresponsive to their needs. So, he and some associates got together and formed their own town, and Christopherson served on its first council. It was the beginning of an interest in working in community development. He returned to Wyoming in 2000 and got his MBA from the University of Wyoming. He headed an economic development group in Riverton before moving to Gillette to head up Energy Capital in the summer of 2014. Christopherson sat down with County 17 to discuss what Energy Capital has done to weather a difficult period in Gillette’s economic history, and what the organization is working on for the future of economic growth and diversification in Campbell County.

The Powder River Playhouse is one of Gillette’s community theater groups. It’s known for its complex productions of Broadway-quality musicals filled with an amazing amount of talent. Somehow, in a town of under 33,000, the theater group creates an impressive collaboration of skills and talent from a wide and diverse group of people in town. Their upcoming performance is Sweeney Todd, which they will be performing at the Cam-Plex on Oct. 19 and 20 at 7 p.m. Director Teddi Smothermon discusses the joys of drawing out people’s talents and helping them realize their passions. She also talks about how she manages to bring an all-volunteer group together to put on these shows for the community. Also joining the podcast today are Caitlyn Carson, who plays Mrs. Lovett, and Bradley Barker, who plays Sweeney Todd. The actors talk about what they love most about working with Powder River Playhouse, and they treat us to a sample of their Sweeney Todd performance.

The Campbell County Rockpile Museum has been in operation for 45 years, and Robert Henning, its current director, is coming up on his 12th year at the museum. County 17 reporter Kevin Killough discusses with Henning why museums are such an integral part of the community.  Henning discusses just what an enormous task it is to catalogue the museum’s collection, the challenge to finding resources for such cultural assets, and how vital volunteers are to keeping it running. He also discusses the pride he and its staff take in all they do to give Campbell County a museum the citizens can be proud of.