Nick Pince, then 16, was cleared after no evidence of wrongdoing was found in the necropsy last summer. But now he's seeking restitution in a case that shows the difficult situations that arise when agricultural officials try to catch cheaters at county and state fairs.
Cheating at county and state fairs is as old as the first cruel mind who added weight to a hog by shoving a water hose down its throat and turning on the spigot.
Newer methods are more refined. They include drugs such as clenbuterol, which helps animals gain weight quickly but can sicken people who eat the meat. Many county and state fairs ban drugs and test for them. They also conduct DNA test to check for ringers - animals illegally substituted at shows.
"It's very difficult to always catch what somebody might or might not be doing to manipulate the animal, and so you make your best effort," said Chris Wiseman, general manager of the Colorado State Fair.
State and county fairs have rules to follow when cheating is suspected. No exceptions are the Fremont County Fair, where Pete took top honors, and the Wyoming State Fair, where Pete won his class.
Until Pete was taken, Pince said he had no idea he was under suspicion. The Pinces say the people who suspected Nick took it upon themselves to investigate, bypassing established protocol.
"People abusing their power, is what it amounted to. Folks who ought to know better," said their attorney, Dan Frank of Cheyenne.
The Pinces insist that Nick didn't cheat, and the investigation proved it. But more than six months later, they say they haven't received an official explanation or apology.
In March, the Pinces filed a governmental claim, a prerequisite for suing public officials and agencies in Wyoming. It seeks $100,000 in damages to Nick Pince, $50,000 to his sister, Hailey Pince, and $88,000 to Hirchell LeClair, a University of Wyoming agriculture student who sold the steer to Nick in 2007. The Pince family neither rules in nor rules out eventually filing suit.
Frank contends that Nick had custody and responsibility for Pete, so the warrantless confiscation of the animal violated Nick's constitutional rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
It began the night before Pete won grand champion at the Fremont County Fair. While housed at the fair barn, Pete got bloat - a potentially deadly gas buildup.
LeClair, who advised Nick on caring for Pete, suggested walking Pete back and forth, massaging him and giving him a drug called Therabloat, which required using a device called a drench gun to get the drug down the steer's throat.
"It took quite a while but soon enough we were successful in getting him back to his normal state," LeClair, who declined to comment for this story, wrote in a signed statement for the governmental claim.
According to the claim documents, while Nick was working on the steer he was being watched by Crystal Woehlecke, his agriculture teacher at Shoshoni High School.
Woehlecke wrote that she couldn't see clearly but "there was something in Herschel's (sic) hand." She made the notes in a log book that Frank obtained through an open records request.
Cheating by "airing" involves using a syringe to inject air under a steer's skin to create a bubble and smooth out imperfections. Woehlecke didn't mention airing specifically in her notes but later told a Wyoming Livestock Board investigator she thought the steer "looked fuller" afterward.
Woehlecke shared her suspicions of cheating Aug. 5 with county schools Superintendent Tammy Cox and Assistant State Veterinarian Jim Logan, who is also a school board member.
According to Woehlecke's notes, Woehlecke and Cox then convinced the woman who had bought the steer after the state fair to allow it to be slaughtered and inspected at the State Veterinary Lab in Laramie.
But the necropsy report following Pete's inspection suggests their suspicions were off the mark.
Some air pockets were found in the fat in Pete's back but weren't "striking in size or distribution." The pockets were "unusual and not a typical post-mortem finding in a fresh carcass" but not "striking enough or distributed widely enough" to suggest tampering, the report said. No injection wounds were found in Pete's hide. Testing for clenbuterol came back negative.
Woehlecke, Cox and Logan declined comment for this story.
Almost a year after the incident, Nick Pince said he remains under suspicion among many of the 100 or so other students at Shoshoni High School.
With LeClair's help, he has returned to showing cattle - but only at events that test for illegal drugs. He said he wants to rebuild his reputation and pursue his dream of showing cattle professionally.
Pince's mother said the unexpected loss of Pete the steer was difficult for her son, who had hoped to spend a few more weeks with the animal before selling it.
"He never got to say goodbye," Lyn Pince said. "He never got to close that chapter of something he'd put months of effort and work into."
Morey money-related links:
Get Action News on your website
