RIVERTON, Wyo., July 22 (UPI) — The Northern Arapaho Business Council said Tuesday that the attempted murder of two homeless tribal members should be regarded as hate crimes.
Roy Clyde, 32, an employee of the Riverton City Parks and Recreation department for 13 years, shot two men at close range on Saturday in the city’s Center of Hope detox center. Both men were lying on beds inside the building when Clyde discharged his handgun on Stallone Trosper and Sonny Goggles before leaving his handgun and shirt on a desk and waiting outside the building for police with his hands up.
Employees at the Center of Hope quickly moved clients into a bathroom for protection. It remains unclear which of the two men was fatally shot.
Clyde later told police that his decision to murder the men was not race-based; rather, he was sick of watching homeless people defecate, vandalize and have sex in the park and would have killed individuals of other races had they met the criteria.
It has not been confirmed whether the men were actually homeless. Clyde remains in jail without bond.
The chairman of the Council, Dean Goggles, said that violence against Native Americans in the city of Riverton has been a growing trend, and that the tribe has attempted to acknowledge and resolve this issue through intergovernmental agreements presented to the city of Riverton a few years back.
Riverton has a population of about 10,000 and is surrounded by the Wind River Reservation, a $2 million acre area that houses over 3,900 Eastern Shoshone and 8,600 Northern Arapaho tribal members.
Tribal leaders said that they will travel to Washington, D.C. to request more cooperation from the federal government in decreasing hate crimes against Native Americans.
Wyoming lacks hate crime laws, forcing any prosecution of this kind to federal authorities.
Council member Richard Brannan also brought up a 2013 incident in which a Northern Arapaho woman was shot in the face by a passing car. The local hospital later released her without treatment.
Comment count on this article reflects comments made on Breitbart.com and Facebook. Visit Breitbart's Facebook Page.