In Wyoming, Shooting Highlights Divide Between a City and a Reservation

Source: New York Times

In Wyoming, Shooting Highlights Divide Between a City and a Reservation
By JACK HEALY
JULY 29, 2015

RIVERTON, Wyo. — Roy Clyde was sick of the homeless people who linger in this city’s parks, urinating in public and drinking bottles of vodka and mouthwash, he told the police. So on a recent afternoon, the police say, he grabbed his handgun, walked into an alcohol detox facility called the Center of Hope and shot two men as they lie on green floor mats, killing one and critically wounding the other.

Local officials called it a senseless attack on society’s most vulnerable fringe. But Mr. Clyde, a city parks worker, was white, and the victims were American Indians, members of the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Tribal officials here on the edge of the two-million-acre Wind River Reservation saw the shooting as a hate crime that added another page to a long history of violence and mistrust here in Indian Country.

“There’s a lot of animosity toward the Indian people,” said Dean Goggles, the chairman of the Northern Arapaho Tribal Business Council. “It’s always been there.”

Local news forums discussing the case have swelled with condolences and calls for understanding, but also with accusations of bigotry and “race baiting” by people listing off crimes committed against, or by, American Indians in the area. The police and local leaders held a meeting last weekend to reach out to the homeless in the parks, but some residents said they thought the crime had only accentuated the divisions that can feel as constant as Wyoming winds.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/30/us/in-wyoming-shooting-highlights-divide-between-a-city-and-a-reservation.html?_r=0

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After the shooting, Ron Clyde unloaded his gun, took off his shirt and walked outside, arms raised in surrender, to
wait for the police to come, the police said. Credit Tibby Mcdowell/The Ranger, via Associated Press
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