Former Casper police officer pleads not guilty to charges from armed standoff last summer

CASPER, Wyo. — The former Casper Police Department officer accused of firing toward law enforcement while off duty during a 16-hour standoff in east Casper last summer pleaded not guilty to the charges before Judge Catherine Wilking on Wednesday.

Michael Scott Hughes, 30, allegedly barricaded himself in his residence at Quail Run Apartment complex from the evening of Thursday, Aug. 22 through the afternoon of Friday, Aug. 23, when he surrendered.

Hughes is presumed innocent unless proven or pleading guilty.

Court records indicate that Hughes’s bond was reduced to $20,000 and modified to allow him to attend two treatment facilities outside of Wyoming, one of which was focused on clients who were first responders. Hughes joined the Casper police force in 2017.

Hughes appeared in a court Wednesday wearing a beige suit and clean-shaven, save for a thick moustache. His attorney, Trevor Schenk, indicated that Hughes had a new address in Casper.

Hughes is charged with five counts of aggravated assault and battery with a drawn deadly weapon, one for each member of the special response team that was gathered near Hughes’s window trying to pull down the curtains when he allegedly fired out of it.

He is charged with reckless endangerment for firing a weapon into the ceiling, sending the residents above to seek refuge in the bathroom. He is also charged with property destruction, including for allegedly grabbing and breaking a drone that had flown through the window during the standoff.

A witness who was with Hughes at the beginning of the crisis on Aug. 22 told investigators that Hughes had just talked to his wife’s new boyfriend on the phone when he fired the weapon into the ceiling, at which point she left. Hughes was in the midst of a divorce and also had ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with some forms of therapeutic application, in his refrigerator.

The Natrona County Sheriff’s Office responded to the complex around midnight and was in contact with Hughes, who was alone, throughout the encounter, during which he made hundreds of explicit threats to kill officers, according to the affidavit.

Around 4:15 p.m., Hughes handcuffed himself, lay face-down on the floor and allowed himself to be arrested, according to the affidavit.