‘Dad’s Angels’: Casper Electricians Save Biker After Highway Crash

Two Casper electricians thought they’d stumbled onto a tragedy Monday morning. Instead, they became the lifeline for a retired Montana deputy sheriff lying face-down along Wyoming Highway 28.

Cody Carpenter and Jacob Lanier were on their way to a job in Evanston when they spotted a cloud of dust about 20 miles east of Farson. Pulling over, they found a wrecked motorcycle in the gravel and a man sprawled on the shoulder — unmoving, shoes gone, socks soaked in blood, and his helmet cracked down the back.

“My first thought was, ‘Oh man, this guy’s probably dead,'” Carpenter recalled.

Then the rider groaned.

The two immediately dialed 911 and followed dispatch instructions to keep him talking and still. The biker, later identified as 70-year-old Bob Newman of Roundup, Montana, was dazed, asking over and over:

“What happened? Where’s my bike?”

Half an hour later, EMTs arrived. Newman was flown from Farson to the University of Utah Hospital, where doctors diagnosed multiple head injuries, six broken ribs, and other trauma.

For his daughter, Megan Cartwright of Green River, the electricians are nothing short of divine intervention.

“They’re my dad’s angels,” she said through tears from the ICU. “If it wasn’t for them, the outcome could’ve been different.”

Newman — known to fellow riders as “Buffalo Bob” with the Patriot Guard Riders of Montana — was headed to visit Cartwright and her family. He’d recently told her he planned to sell the bike soon, hoping for one last summer ride.

But health issues may have caught up to him. A diabetic with a history of heart attacks, Newman had complained of back pain and confusion the night before, even driving the wrong direction out of Lander. His daughter suspects a mix of medical conditions and medication side effects caused him to black out.

Highway Patrol says Newman veered into gravel for about 25 feet before the bike’s footpeg hit the ground, launching him airborne. Officials believe the crack in his helmet came from colliding with his own bike.

Carpenter and Lanier insist they’re no heroes.

“We just happened to be the first ones there,” said Lanier, 32. But Cartwright doesn’t buy their modesty: “They were amazing, and they were in the right place at the right time.”

Lanier says the rescue stirred up old memories of when he was 10 and strangers pulled him from a wreck after a drunk driver slammed into his grandparents’ car.

“I think about those people a lot,” he said.

For now, Cartwright is clinging to progress. Doctors recently removed Newman’s breathing tube, and she’s eager to hear his voice again.

“It was supposed to be one last ride,” she said, “but it turns out it really was his last.”

The original story by Zakary Sonntag for Cowboy State Daily.