News briefs from around the state of Wyoming

From Wyoming News Exchange newspapers

Information sought about missing Cody woman

POWELL (WNE) — Family members of a missing Cody woman are asking anyone with information about her whereabouts to get in touch with law enforcement.

Katie Ferguson was last seen on Oct. 10 in Arkansas, Ferguson’s mother, Mona Hartling, wrote in a Nov. 5 Facebook post.

Ferguson had been traveling from Dothan, Alabama, to Cody with her ex-boyfriend and their two children, but “somewhere near Little Rock, Arkansas she disappeared,” Hartling wrote.

Hartling shared few other details, explaining in a Saturday post that “we can’t do anything to hurt her [Ferguson’s] case.”

Ferguson’s ex, Adam Aviles Jr., reportedly returned to Cody with the two children. Aviles was arrested last week, but there’s no indication that his arrest was related to Ferguson’s disappearance.

Court records say Aviles and the children had been living with his father.

On Nov. 6, however, Aviles’ father told the Park County Sheriff’s Office that he’d just kicked Aviles out of the house after finding meth and paraphernalia. Hours later, Aviles allegedly stole his father’s 2000 Chevy truck, Sheriff Darrell Steward wrote in an affidavit.

Steward said he and agents with the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation searched Aviles’ father’s home on Nov. 8 and found additional drug paraphernalia that the father had apparently been unaware of. Then, as the officers prepared to leave, Aviles reached out to say he was at a family member’s home and wanted to turn himself in. Aviles was taken into custody.

On Nov. 9, the Park County Attorney’s Office charged Aviles with misdemeanor counts of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle and possession of a controlled substance. Those charges were dropped Monday afternoon, but Aviles remained in custody at the Park County Detention Center, indicating another agency has placed a hold on him. Both Steward and Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric declined to comment on whether that was the case.

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New documentary highlights migration in and through Grand Teton National Park

CASPER (WNE) — “Animal Trails: Rediscovering Grand Teton Migrations,” a new Wyoming-made documentary, shows how the migration patterns often depend on habitats up to 190 miles away from Grand Teton National Park — not just in it.

The film was released by the Wyoming Migration Initiative at the University of Wyoming and Grand Teton National Park. It was directed by Gregory Nickerson. A summer screening at Grand Teton’s Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center and Colter Bay Museum first introduced it to the public.

“The film documents more than a decade of research revealing how Grand Teton National Park’s mule deer and pronghorn actually depend on habitats up to 190 miles away from the park boundaries,” a press release says.

In the winters, big game herds travel to Idaho and the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, as well as across the Cowboy State. Those routes are “vital for their survival.”

“We are living amid a revolution in migration science happening in and around the edges of one of America’s crown-jewel national parks,” Nickerson, a writer and filmmaker with the Wyoming Migration Initiative at the University of Wyoming, said in an online article about the film.

The park has been tracking mule deer migrations since 2013, along with UW, Idaho Fish and Game, Wyoming Game and Fish Department and the Shoshone and Arapaho Tribes Fish and Game of the Wind River Indian Reservation.

One of the key tenets of the film, the article says, is its understanding that Indigenous people were the first to track and understand the impacts of migration patterns.

The 25-minute long film will show at the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center and Colter Bay Museum next summer. It is also available to watch on Vimeo or YouTube.

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Gillette atheist appealing to Supreme Court after judge dismisses $24 million lawsuit against city

GILLETTE (WNE) — A Gillette resident is appealing a district judge’s decision to dismiss his lawsuit against the city of Gillette.

Earlier this year, District Judge Stuart S. Healy III dismissed Bruce Williams’ $24 million lawsuit in which he alleged that he was discriminated against because he is an atheist. The city argued that it has governmental immunity.

Williams is now asking the Wyoming Supreme Court to send the case back to District Court.

In Healy’s motion to dismiss the complaint, he wrote that Williams’ claims didn’t have any real proof behind them.

“He asserts, without citation to controlling authority or cogent legal argument, that the (Wyoming Governmental Claims Act) is simply not applicable to his claims. His argument in this regard may be kindly characterized as purely subjective speculation — conclusory, attenuated, and unsupported by citation to existing law or fact,” Healy wrote.

Williams alleged that since 2014, he’s been the victim of “conspiratorial oppression” by the city and that the city has violated state law 97 separate times by showing a preference for Christian leaders over non-religious people.

That includes not allowing him the right number of invocations per year, not allowing him to give an invocation as an atheist to the city council in a public meeting, “using preferred religion as control” and three instances when members of the city council walked out as he was about to give an invocation.

Williams was seeking $250,000 in damages for each alleged violation of state statute, which comes out to more than $24 million.

The city claimed Williams’ suit didn’t have any foundation because it has governmental immunity, a protection afforded to government entities when it comes to lawsuits.

In a response to the city’s motion to dismiss, Williams claimed that governments in Wyoming don’t have immunity.