Former CPD officer pleads guilty, faces 5 years for armed standoff last summer

CASPER, Wyo. — A former Casper Police Department officer pleaded guilty Thursday to felony charges for firing a handgun toward law enforcement during a 16-hour standoff in east Casper last summer. 

Michael Scott Hughes, 30, told Judge Catherine Wilking he had been going through a mental health crisis and had been suicidal and intoxicated. In the midst of a divorce, Hughes had fired shots into the ceiling of his apartment on the evening of Aug. 22, causing a witness to leave and summon the authorities, according to charging documents.

The Natrona County Sheriff’s Office and a special response team surrounded the apartment and tried to negotiate with Hughes overnight, during which period he made hundreds of explicit threats to kill officers, according to the NCSO affidavit.

“I don’t recall everything, but during that encounter I fired a shot outside my apartment at a drone,” Hughes said Thursday.

District Attorney Dan Itzen said the state would ask for no more than five years in prison at sentencing.

Hughes pleaded to five counts of aggravated assault and battery with a drawn deadly weapon: one count for each member of the special response team that was gathered outside Hughes’s window trying to pull down the curtains when he fired the handgun. The bullet is believed to have traveled toward an unoccupied playground and one of the evacuated apartment buildings.

The plea agreement calls for each of the five aggravated assault counts to run at the same time.

Hughes also pleaded to misdemeanor reckless endangerment for firing shots into the ceiling. Though the bullets didn’t fully penetrate the concrete, the residents above ran for shelter in the bathroom, according to the report.

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. She also reported that Hughes had ketamine, a dissociative anesthetic with some emerging forms of therapeutic application, in his refrigerator.

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

Hughes had been employed since 2017 at the Casper Police Department.

A charge of property destruction was dropped, though Hughes will be responsible for any monetary restitution. He reportedly grabbed and broke a drone that had flown through the window during the standoff.

Judge Wilking cautioned Hughes that she is not bound to accept the terms of the plea agreement at sentencing.

Hughes remains out of custody on a $20,000 bond. Before his arraignment in December, he was allowed to attend two treatment facilities, one of which was focused on the needs and experiences of first responders, according to court records.