Episode Details

It's time to take a look at what's happening around Wyoming, for Thursday, April 24th. I'm Wendy Corr, bringing you headlines from the Cowboy State Daily newsroom - Brought to you by the Wyoming Community Foundation, who asks you to give back to the place you call home. "5 to thrive" is YOUR opportunity to leave a legacy for generations to come. Support the community nonprofits you care about with a gift through the Wyoming Community Foundation. Visit wycf.org to learn more.

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The rate of workplace fatalities in Wyoming has not improved over the past 20 years. In fact, they spiked in 2023, increasing by 25% to 45 deaths, the most recorded in Wyoming in 16 years.

Marcie Kindred is the executive director of Wyoming State AFL-CIO. She told Cowboy State Daily's Leo Wolfson that she believes that Gov. Mark Gordon and the Legislature aren't doing enough to prevent those workplace deaths.

"Wyoming had the highest per capita rate of workplace fatalities in the country based off population size. So it is a serious issue, and they… just don't see the legislature or the governor really doing much about it… Kevin Holly, who's also the president of the Wyoming truckers Association… He's going to try to work to gain public and private funding for an awareness campaign to alert drivers to the dangers of driving on Wyoming roads."

The director of the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services said only six of the 2023 deaths fell under OSHA jurisdiction, and the remaining 39 were either related to transportation accidents, drug overdoses, or other areas over which OSHA has no authority.

Read the full story HERE.

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The trespassing case of a Cheyenne man known for striding into local businesses with a staff in hand and pronouncing hexes on people is set for a bench trial next month, putting his fate in the hands of a judge rather than a jury of Laramie County residents.

43-year-old Joshua Hayden-Ali was originally charged with felony-level intimidation, on claims that he entered the Laramie County Courthouse last August and disrupted its business, threatened its attendees and scattered its papers on Aug. 6, 2024, after early voting had started.

But Hayden-Ali told Cowboy State Daily's Clair McFarland on Wednesday that he's being set up by a secret society.

"He said that claims against him started surfacing when he disavowed the Masons, and he was part of that society his whole life, and he decided to cut ties a couple years ago. And after that, accusations started piling on. And he also claimed that they paid him to put curses on people so that their businesses would would die. And I asked the grand Mason, leader of the whole state of Wyoming, is there anything to this? And he said, No, this person has never been on our rosters, applied to be within our ranks, and we do not pay people to perform witchcraft."

A handful of Cheyenne shop owners told Cowboy State Daily that they're worried for the man's mental health, and described him as a "time bomb."

Read the full story HERE.

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It's not all smooth flying for Wyoming's regional airports. There's financial turbulence ahead, in particular for the Riverton, Rock Springs, Gillette and Sheridan airports, who created their own capacity pur