Wyoming

Ed Cantrell (December 21, 1927 – June 11, 2004) was the public safety director of Rock Springs, Wyoming, a town tied to widespread corruption, who killed one of his own officers in 1978 but was acquitted after trial.The son of Samuel Glenn Cantrell, a Nazarene minister and Vesta Marie (née Robinson) Cantrell, Ed was born in Bloomington, Indiana. He excelled in sports and graduated from Plainfield High School in 1945 with a football and basketball scholarship. Aspiring to be a coach, he had almost completed three years at Indiana State College when President Truman ordered the Berlin airlift in 1948. Cantrell immediately enlisted in the Army and spent three years as a military policeman in the "bombed-out ruin" south of Frankfurt, Germany. His tour of duty was then extended due to the Korean War. Upon discharge, he graduated with honors from the Indiana State Police Academy.
An avid hunter, fisherman and marksman, he later visited Wyoming and decided to relocate there. Accepted into the Wyoming Highway Patrol, he was assigned to the Rock Springs area in 1960. Although he liked his job, he later resigned from the highway patrol to lobby for a state police bill. "A little skeleton crew of highway patrolmen and a sheriff's department were understaffed," he said, explaining that he and his fellow officers were trying to create a more effective state police force.
The following January he was hired as a range detective in Lusk. His job took him all over Wyoming as well as neighboring states in pursuit of lawbreakers. Then, in 1976, following the death of his oldest son in a car accident, Cantrell and his wife decided to return to Rock Springs, where he worked for undersheriff Jim Stark. The following year Cantrell assumed the post of safety director of a badly demoralized Rock Springs police force. He then formed a detective division from existing officers and hired Michael Rosa as an undercover detective.

Dan Collins Taylor (September 2, 1923 – November 3, 2010) was an American cowboy, rodeo performer, and promoter. In 2006, Taylor was inducted into the Rodeo Hall of Fame of the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Taylor died on November 3, 2010, in Doole, Texas.

Wayne Wright Connally (March 19, 1923 – December 20, 2000) was an American politician. He served as a Democratic member for the 58th district of the Texas House of Representatives. He also served as a member for the 21st district of the Texas Senate.

Jessica Whitney Dubroff (May 5, 1988 – April 11, 1996) was a seven-year-old American trainee pilot who died while attempting to become the youngest person to fly a light aircraft across the United States. On day two of her quest, the Cessna 177B Cardinal single-engine aircraft, piloted by her flight instructor, Joe Reid, crashed during a rainstorm immediately after takeoff from Cheyenne Regional Airport in Cheyenne, Wyoming, killing Dubroff, her 57-year-old father Lloyd Dubroff, and Reid.: 6 Although billed by the media as a pilot, Dubroff was not legally able to be a pilot because of her age. She did not possess a medical certificate or a student pilot certificate, since they require a minimum age of 16 or a pilot certificate that requires a minimum age of 17, according to U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulations. At the time of her trip, there was no record-keeping body that recognized any feats by underage pilots. Nevertheless, local, national, and international news media picked up and publicized Dubroff's story, and closely followed her attempt until its tragic ending.The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) investigated the crash and concluded that the fatality was caused by Reid's improper decision to take off in poor weather conditions, his overloading the aircraft, and his failure to maintain airspeed. The three factors resulted in a stall and subsequent fatal crash in a residential neighborhood. The NTSB also determined that "contributing to the [instructor's] decision to take off was a desire to adhere to an overly ambitious itinerary, in part, because of media commitments.": 53