BayLee Gene Carabajal-Clark, a 15-year-old girl from Cheyenne, Wyoming, spent the late hours of April 29, 2023 at a family barbecue and then at Lincoln Park, where relatives and friends gathered on and around the basketball court after the South High School prom. Shortly after midnight, as the group played and watched the game under the park lights, a dark SUV slowly approached along East 7th Street.
Witnesses later recounted that gunfire erupted from the vehicle toward the court, and a bullet struck BayLee in the head as she sat near the edge of the court watching her loved ones play.
Police were dispatched to Lincoln Park around 12:23 a.m. on April 30 after reports of shots fired. Officers found BayLee gravely wounded with a gunshot wound to the head. She was rushed to Cheyenne Regional Medical Center, where doctors could not save her; she was pronounced dead the following day, on May 1, 2023, with family gathered at her bedside. In the days that followed, her obituary described a warm, outgoing teenager, a ninth grader at South High School who was deeply loved by parents, siblings, extended family, and friends, and whose killing left those closest to her struggling to put their grief into words. Vigils and community gatherings were held at local churches and in the city to honor her life and to call attention to youth violence and gunfire in Cheyenne.
As detectives from the Cheyenne Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force pieced events together, attention focused on a group of teenagers riding in a dark-colored SUV that had driven past the park that night. Within days, investigators announced the arrests of two Cheyenne boys, ages 17 and 16, on charges related to the shooting. The older teen faced counts of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, while the younger was accused of conspiracy and aiding and abetting first-degree murder. Prosecutors later identified them as Johnny Angel Muñoz, alleged to be the shooter in the front passenger seat, and Julian Espinoza, alleged to be the driver. Both were charged as adults in Laramie County District Court, reflecting the severity with which authorities viewed the drive-by attack on the crowded park.
Court testimony over the following months painted a picture of simmering disputes among local teens that reportedly set the stage for the gunfire. According to prosecutors, Muñoz believed a rival, Joey Carabajal Jr., would be at the park that night, and the SUV made a deliberate pass by the court with a. 380-caliber handgun and ammunition inside. Witnesses described the vehicle slowing as it approached, its passenger window lowering, and shots being fired toward the basketball court, after which at least one person on the court fired back with a 9mm handgun. Investigators later recovered. 380 shell casings along the street and numerous 9mm casings in the grass near the court, evidence that fed into the prosecution's theory that the bullet which struck BayLee came from the SUV rather than from the park.
Muñoz's case moved toward trial through 2023, with a judge ruling that he would remain in adult court despite defense efforts to shift the proceedings to juvenile jurisdiction. At the late-November trial, jurors heard emotional testimony from BayLee's family and friends about the night at the park, as well as detailed forensic and video evidence tying the SUV, its route, and the gunfire to the fatal shot. In early December 2023, after hours of deliberation, a Laramie County jury found Muñoz guilty of second-degree murder in BayLee's death, rejecting the original first-degree charge but affirming that he had acted with extreme recklessness and malice when he opened fire into the park.
In March 2024, the court imposed long prison terms on both young men. Muñoz, by then 18, was sentenced to 25 to 35 years in prison for second-degree murder, with a recommendation that he be placed in the state's Youthful Offender Treatment Program. Espinoza, who had entered into a plea agreement after Muñoz's trial, was sentenced to five to seven years in prison, with the same recommendation to the Youthful Offender program, for his role as the driver in the deadly drive-by. Even as the criminal cases moved forward and appeals began, court reports and family memorials emphasized that no sentence could truly measure the loss: a teenager whose life centered on school, family, and ordinary nights at the park, whose death transformed a familiar neighborhood court into the site of a lasting grief for those who loved her.
