State Briefs

No charges will be filed in Riverton shooting death

RIVERTON (WNE) — No charges will be filed in the November homicide that resulted in the death of Lisa Pitt, 39, of Riverton, Fremont County Attorney Patrick LeBrun said Friday.

Pitt died of a “single perforating gunshot wound” to the trunk, according to the Fremont County Coroner’s Office.

The incident was reported at about 8:20 p.m. Nov. 23 near Tundra Drive in Riverton.

“This was an accidental shooting,” LeBrun wrote in a Friday statement, noting that Pitt’s husband was involved.

“The Riverton Police Department investigation determined that Mr. Pitt was in the act of carrying his Glock .9mm pistol to his bedroom to place it inside a small pistol gun safe next to the couple’s bed. As Mr. Pitt walked past the couple’s walk-in closet, the inside of which was blocked from view owing to clothing hanging from the top of the door, Mrs. Pitt jumped out of the closet in a playful effort to scare her husband. Startled, Mr. Pitt shot and killed her.”

The pair’s teenage son was home and had confirmed that “nothing was out of the ordinary” before his father began yelling for help when the incident occurred, LeBrun added.

LeBrun said “there may be some theory” under which Mr. Pitt could be prosecuted, but “there is no sense to it under these specific facts. This was a devastating accident – and to prosecute such an event would add nothing to the life sentence of regret already present.”

Wyoming ranked No. 1 in 2019 for suicide rate

SHERIDAN (WNE) — Following the release of 2019 statistics, Wyoming is again No. 1 in suicide rates per capita.

“I love Wyoming being No. 1 in everything except this one,” Sheridan Police Chief Travis Koltiska said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released 2019 statistics Dec. 23, 2020, indicating Wyoming topped the charts for deaths per capita of suicide with 170 deaths, or a rate of 29.4 per 100,000 population. Following Wyoming were regional states: Alaska (second, 28.7 rate), Montana (third, 27.0 rate), New Mexico (fourth, 24.5 rate) and Colorado (fifth, 22.8 rate). Oregon, Nevada, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Maine rounded out the top 10.

As a region, the Mountain West proves the most vulnerable to suicide deaths, as its rate of death is 21.6 per 100,000 collectively, recording 5,364 suicide deaths in 2019.

Firearm suicides were again the most common, accounting for 50.4% of all suicide deaths in 2019.

Demographic breakdowns saw significantly more males, middle-aged adults ages 45-64 years old and white people.

Man drowns after falling through ice

RIVERTON (WNE) — A 58-year-old Fremont County man died Thursday after falling through the ice on Ocean Lake, Sheriff Ryan Lee said in a press release Friday.

The man’s name was not immediately released by the Fremont County Coroner’s Office.

Lee said the fatal incident was reported at about 8 p.m. Thursday after a side-by-side all-terrain vehicle – occupied by the 58-year-old and his brother – fell through the ice several hundred yards west of Dickinson Park.

When a deputy arrived at the scene about 20 minutes later, Lee said one of the men was “being walked to shore” – but the other was “still inside the completely submerged vehicle.”

Ice divers later recovered the deceased 58-year-old from about 12 feet of water, Lee said.

The surviving brother was not injured.

A preliminary investigation revealed that the brothers had driven near a pressure ridge with open water, Lee said Friday, encouraging anglers to be “extra aware” of ice conditions over the weekend.

“Frozen waters around the county have become compromised, especially in areas prone to already having thin ice such as pressure ridges,” Lee said, adding, “High winds and unseasonably warm temperatures cut ice fast.”

He reiterated the message in a public service announcement issued later Friday, noting that certain areas – such as inlets and outlets or areas with a current, an aerator, or a pressure ridge formed during ice-over – are “prone to thin ice conditions throughout even the coldest of winter months.”

UW to identify $20 million in cuts

CASPER (WNE) — The University of Wyoming is aiming to find $15-20 million to cut from academic programs by July, Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Anne Alexander told the Board of Trustees in a work session Friday.

Wyoming’s sole public four-year university needs to slash its budget as the state stares down a massive general fund deficit that has led to millions in cuts statewide. The university has been tasked with cutting $42 million from its two-year budget, with potentially another $21 million Gov. Mark Gordon has told the university to prepare for, according to school President Ed Seidel’s budget reduction plan.

The university in late October announced it would be cutting 78 staff positions and nearly 20 degree programs, as well as consolidating multiple programs, to begin to meet the shortfall. The cuts were estimated to save the university $2.5 million annually, according to a release from the institution published Oct. 27.

But that announcement covered just the first phase.

Alexander said Friday every program the university offers will be reviewed between now and May, and the board will receive recommendations for areas to cut or consolidate by July. She said there was no way to know how many programs will be eliminated until they are reviewed, but she did call the cuts unprecedented, adding, “this is going to be a major undertaking.”

She hopes by May to have identified $15 million in savings, with another $5 million to present by July, she said.

UW research shows wildfire smoke has cooling effect

RAWLINS (WNE) — A study of biomass burning aerosols led by University of Wyoming researchers revealed that smoke from wildfires has more of a cooling effect on the atmosphere than computer models assume.

“The study addresses the impact of wildfires on global climate, and we extensively used the NCAR-Wyoming supercomputer (Cheyenne),” says Shane Murphy, a UW associate professor of atmospheric science. “Also, the paper used observations from UW and other teams around the world to compare to the climate model results. The main conclusion of the work is that wildfire smoke is more cooling than current models assume.”

Murphy was a contributing author of a paper, titled “Biomass Burning Aerosols in Most Climate Models Are Too Absorbing,” that was published Jan. 12 in Nature Communications, an open-access journal that publishes high-quality research from all areas of the natural sciences. Papers published by the journal represent important advances of significance to specialists within each field.

Hunter Brown, who graduated from UW in fall 2020 with a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, was the paper’s lead author. Other contributors to the paper included researchers from Texas A&M University; North Carolina A&T State University; the University of Georgia; the Finnish Meteorological Institute; the Center for International Climate and Environmental Science, and Norwegian Meteorological Institute, both in Oslo, Norway; the University of Reading in the United Kingdom; North-West University in South Africa; the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, China; and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington.