Men Sentenced to Federal Prison for Armed Carjacking in Cheyenne

Two men have been sentenced to federal prison for their role in an armed carjacking in south Cheyenne in April 2020, Acting U.S. Attorney Bob Murray announced Thursday.

Oscar Alfredo Oritz, 20, of Cheyenne, was sentenced to 15 years and Jacob Nathaniel Hopkins Trigg, 19, of Erie, Colorado, was sentenced to nine years.

Cheyenne police say the two were walking in the middle of Southwest Drive around 10:30 p.m. on April 21, 2020, when the victim stopped to offer assistance.

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"Ortiz brandished a rifle and demanded the victim turn over control of the vehicle," Murray said in a press release. "Trigg pointed a handgun at the victim and demanded he empty his pockets."

Ortiz and Trigg then ordered the victim out at gun point and fled to Colorado. They were later arrested after returning to Cheyenne.

"I want to send a clear message to would-be carjackers: Committing a senseless act of violence like carjacking will earn you a home in federal prison for a long time," said Murray.

Both Ortiz and Trigg will be on supervised release for five years once they are released from prison.

For more information about this case, check out our earlier posts:

Wyoming Restaurants Featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives

It's hard not to take this a little personally. Guy Fieri of the Food Network's Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives has visited the Cowboy State a few times. Yet each time he stays close to Jackson. The show takes us on a culinary voyage across the U.S, but he's never stopped in Cheyenne, Casper, or even Chugwater.

CLASSIC CHEYENNE: The Cole Shopping Center

In December of 2020, Blue Federal Credit Union completed its new headquarters at the corner of Converse and Pershing in Cheyenne. Well, it’s not so much a ‘corner’ as it is the smooth edge of a roundabout, but anyway. Before Blue FCU built its new campus, the site was at one time a premier shopping destination for Cheyenne. From the 1950s through 2016 it was Cheyenne's Cole Shopping Center.

Local businessman Frank Cole bought the land that would become a Cheyenne gathering place in the 1950s when the corner of Converse and Pershing was the edge of town. Starting in 1952, three different Safeway grocery stores called the Cole home over its half-century of existence. A plethora of other stores served the neighborhood too. From the movie theater to Blockbuster; there was the Cole Department Store, the fabric store, the East Branch of the Carnegie Library, and so much more.

As Cheyenne grew and changed, the Shopping Center fell into decline. Stores closed and new ones didn't take their places. The anchor of the area, Safeway, closed for good in 2016 with much of the rest following. In 2018 the buildings were demolished and the new construction began.

The Cole was so integral to the neighborhood that when we asked on social media for folks’ memories we were flooded with hundreds of responses.

Check out many of those memories below, along with several pictures of the Cole Shopping Center, mostly from near the end in the twenty-teens.

Top 10 Things to Do in Laramie

If you're new to town or visiting the Gem City, there are many things to see and do in our area. Laramie is like a special pocket of awesome in Wyoming. Between the University of Wyoming and the unmatched natural beauty, Laramie has so much to offer. To narrow things down and create a sort of starter list we turned to the folks at Trip Advisor to see what the people say. So, according to Trip Advisor reviews, here are the top 10 things to do in Laramie: