Jeremiah Lettiere

On the afternoon of April 6, officers across the northern Big Horn Basin were asked to be on the lookout for a white Dodge truck that had just fled from a state trooper.

It wasn’t long before a Park County sheriff’s deputy spotted a white Dodge speeding toward Cody on U.S. Highway 14A.

The driver of the vehicle, 47-year-old Jeremiah Lettiere, pulled over for the officer, but charging documents allege Lettiere was uncooperative and appeared to be drunk. The Meeteetse resident was arrested on suspicion of driving while under the influence of alcohol.

As it turned out, however, he was not the man authorities were looking for.

“Just so it’s clear, Mr. Lettiere was not in a pursuit with highway patrol,” Deputy Park County Attorney Jack Hatfield said at a hearing in circuit court last week.

The Wyoming Highway Patrol determined it was instead a Powell man who’d fled in a very similar truck.

The pursuit

Trooper Kraig McInally said he noticed a Dodge with expired plates a bit before 4:30 p.m. on April 6 and tried making a traffic stop, but the driver “took off.”

The speed limit in the City of Powell is 25 mph, but McInally guessed the vehicle hit speeds between 45 and 60 mph.

The patrol has a “no pursuit” policy inside city limits, the trooper said, and the driver “went through that residential area so fast I wasn’t able to catch up to him.”

McInally quickly put out word to law enforcement agencies in Park and Big Horn counties, and Lettiere was stopped about 20 minutes later.

“It was pretty much the exact truck,” McInally said, but “I wanted to be absolutely sure it was him.”

The trooper obtained security camera footage and spoke with a witness, which both confirmed the fleeing truck had a distinguishing feature: It carried the name of a Powell contractor on its side.

McInally later visited the business, where Morgan T. Black allegedly admitted that he’d been the person behind the wheel of the truck. 

Because the trooper never was able to catch up to Black, a citation for careless driving “was basically all I could give him,” McInally said. A charge of fleeing and eluding wasn’t an option because “I was never able to turn my lights on.”

Black, who turns 32 this year, can close out the citation by forfeiting $250 or he can appear in Park County Circuit Court next month and contest it.

The arrest

Although Lettiere was caught up in a case of mistaken identity, charging documents allege it was his own driving and behavior that resulted in his arrest.

Sheriff’s Deputy Bronson Faughn wrote in an affidavit that he clocked Lettiere’s truck going 81 mph on the 70 mph highway, and saw him traveling between lanes. Lettiere hit a delineator post as he pulled over, and when deputies ordered him out of the truck, he was so unsteady that he almost fell into the lane of traffic, charging documents allege.

Lettiere smelled like alcohol, slurred his speech and had bloodshot, glassy eyes, the affidavit says, and he became belligerent when he learned he was being arrested for DUI. 

Authorities later obtained a search warrant to get a sample of Lettiere’s blood for chemical testing, but they did not get one, as the suspect “became extremely agitated to the point that it appeared he was going to get physical,” Faughn wrote. 

The consensus, the deputy said, was “it would not be a good idea to fight this guy to get a blood draw and that we didn’t want medical staff getting hurt in the process.”

The sheriff’s office did cite Lettiere for interference, alongside misdemeanor counts of DWUI, careless driving and speeding; Hatfield has also asked Circuit Court Judge Joey Darrah to hold Lettiere in contempt of court.

Criminal history

Lettiere pleaded not guilty and denied the contempt allegation last week.

At the April 8 hearing, Hatfield argued for Lettiere’s bail to be set at $5,000 cash only. The prosecutor cited an “extensive” criminal history that includes a nine-year stint in federal prison for a 2009 robbery in Missoula, Montana.

Lettier acknowledged his past convictions, but “that is my past,” he told the court. “I’m not going to blame anybody or anything on what I’ve done in my life, but my life is a lot different [now].”

He asked for a lower, $1,500 bond, and Darrah offered the option of a $5,000 surety bond, which Lettiere posted April 9. 

A trial is set for late August.

That Lettiere’s arrest outside Cody was the result of someone simultaneously driving poorly in Powell in the exact same type of vehicle put the incident into the category of “you wouldn’t believe me if I told you this” for Trooper McInally.

“Unfortunately, a white, long bed Dodge 2500 is extremely common here in Wyoming,” he laughed.