The Sweetwater County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office has been assigned the duty of determining whether a Park County Sheriff’s deputy was justified in fatally shooting a Cody man in August. A determination could come as soon as next week.

Park County commissioners formally appointed Sweetwater County Attorney Dan Erramouspe as a special prosecutor on Tuesday. Erramouspe has agreed to examine the evidence related to the Aug. 30 death of Jack McGlothlin, a 37-year-old Park County resident.

Few details have been released about the “critical incident,” but the Park County Sheriff’s Office has said it began when Lt. Mark Hartman tried to pull McGlothlin over. McGlothlin — who had an active warrant relating to allegations that trespassed at and surveilled a Cody day care in June — reportedly fled. The suspect eventually stopped his vehicle on a canal road, but “exited with a firearm pointed at Lt. Hartman,” the sheriff’s office has said. “After a physical confrontation, shots were fired.”

The office has said Hartman was “forced to engage the man with lethal force” and McGlothlin died at the scene.

As is standard practice, the Wyoming Division of Criminal Investigation was summoned to investigate the officer-involved shooting. DCI submitted its report to Park County Attorney Bryan Skoric in late December, though he said some miscommunication about whether it was complete led to a delay in it being forwarded to an outside prosecutor.

Erramouspe said Wednesday that he hopes to complete his review by the end of next week, indicating that the bulk of the work has been completed.

“It took a long time, obviously, to gather all this information before giving it to me,” he said. “So I think reviewing it is the easy part.”

While Erramouspe plans to complete his review soon, the Rock Springs-based prosecutor said that timeline could be delayed if he feels something is missing from DCI’s report.

“Right now this is priority one for me,” Erramouspe said. “I know that this does have a lot of interest locally and it also has some interest to the agency of the officer that was involved in the shooting — and the family of Mr. Hartman.”

Park County will not have to pay Sweetwater County for the review, as prosecutors around the state take on appointments for each other when conflicts arise.

As one example, Skoric reviewed a case for Campbell County last year, in which two Gillette police officers shot and killed a 22-year-old man. The officers initially tried using non-lethal methods to subdue the man, but fired after he came at them with a machete; Skoric concluded their actions were justified. From the time of his appointment as a special prosecutor to the public release of his conclusions, Skoric’s review took approximately two-and-a-half months — from early February to mid-April 2022.

Skoric has reviewed past shootings involving Powell and Cody police officers, but didn’t feel he should review an incident involving an agency he serves.

“Due to the Park County and Prosecuting Attorney’s statutory legal representation of the Park County Sheriff’s Department, he [Skoric] has deemed it advisable to have an outside prosecutor review the matter …,” says a portion of the commissioners’ resolution appointing Erramouspe.

As they have with past appointments of special prosecutors, commissioners approved the resolution with no discussion, simply including the document in Tuesday’s consent agenda.