Wyoming Horror

When he was marshal of the tiny (pop. 650) ranching town of Cokeville, Wyo., David Young often dressed up like an old-time sheriff and brandished his pistol at the slightest provocation. Fired eight years ago for overzealousness, he moved away, some said back to Iowa, where he had grown up an orphan obsessed with guns. Last week Young, 42, returned with a horrible vengeance.

Pulling up to the local elementary school in the middle of town at about 1 p.m. Friday, Young and his wife Doris, 47, calmly unloaded three gasoline bombs, nine handguns and four rifles. Waving bizarre political tracts (one was headlined ZERO-INFINITY), Young announced in the school office, "This is a revolution." Doris, telling some teachers that there was to be a surprise birthday party, lured 167 schoolchildren and adults into a first-grade classroom, where they stood at gunpoint in frightened silence. Declaring that he had enough explosives to "wipe out Cokeville," Young told Principal Max Excell that he wanted a whopping ransom of $2 million a hostage, as well as a talk with President Reagan. "Why Cokeville?" asked Excell. Replied Young: "Because it's a nice little Mormon town where people won't let anything happen to their kids."

As police surrounded the school and townspeople scrambled to raise ransom money, Doris tried to comfort the scared and tired children by bringing in library books, crayons and a television set. Some youngsters wept; a few vomited into the classroom sink. After a 2 1/2-hour standoff, White left to go to the bathroom, handing his wife, who was standing in the center of the room, two bottles of gasoline wired to a battery and manual trigger. When her hand apparently slipped on the trigger, she set off the crude bomb. The blast killed her instantly. It seared young faces with flash burns and ignited clothes. Reeling teachers shoved children through the blown-out windows onto the grass outside, where they lay screaming and shivering with shock as their parents fought through police lines to reach them. Some 70 people were later hospitalized; at least one child had burns over 50% of his body. Young, rushing back from the toilet, shot School Bandleader Jon Miller, wounding him in the back. Then he ended the madness with a bullet to his head.