On a cold Saturday morning in early March, the kind of morning when Riverton, Wyoming, is still shaking off the night, a young girl woke up in a motel room on North Federal Boulevard. She was at the Ol’ Wyoming Motel, a place where people pass through, where rooms are temporary and lives are often in between things. But for this little girl, it was home.
She lived there with her mother and father. And on March 7, 2026, she walked into the bathroom and found her mother on the floor, blood pooling beneath her head, no longer breathing. That mother was Angelina Rose Bell. She was 24 years old.
The call came into dispatch around 7 a.m. A caller reported that a little girl had found her mother and wasn’t sure if she was conscious, but there was lots of blood. Officers from the Riverton Police Department arrived quickly. They entered the room and found Angelina lying on her right side on the bathroom floor. Officer Brandon Brookover checked for signs of life. There were none. In the toilet bowl, he spotted a spent 9mm bullet casing. The scene was secured, and detectives were called in.
The little girl, still in the room, spoke to Officer Scott Christoffersen. She was too young to fully understand what had happened, but she knew her mother was in the bathroom. Later, at the police station, she spoke with a victim witness coordinator. The things she said would haunt everyone who heard them.
“Daddy went for a walk,” she said. “Mommy has blood on her.” “Daddy was mad at Mommy.” “Mommy’s dead.” The words came from a child too small to fabricate such details, too innocent to grasp the weight of what she was describing. She was later placed with family, but the image of what she saw that morning will never leave her.
Angelina Rose Bell was born on August 11, 2001, in Riverton to Byron James Bell and Angel Christine Moss. From her first days, she was wrapped in the strong family ties and cultural heritage of the Arapaho people. She grew up in Riverton and Arapahoe, and the Wind River area was not just a place on a map to her. It was home. It was identity. It was where she belonged.
She attended Arapaho Charter High School and graduated in 2022. Classmates remember her as quiet but determined, someone who carried herself with a quiet dignity rooted in something deeper than most people her age. She practiced the Traditional Native American ways and held her culture close. The teachings passed down through generations mattered to her, and she honored them in how she lived, how she worked, and how she treated others.
After high school, Angelina worked as a waitress at the Rusty Truck and the Airport Café. Later, she took a position as a housekeeper at the Casino. In every job, she brought the same steady warmth and work ethic. She showed up reliably. She treated customers and coworkers with respect. She was the kind of employee managers appreciated and customers remembered, not because she sought attention, but because she was genuinely kind.
At some point, she met Sterling Louis Black Jr. He was 25. They became a couple and had a daughter together. But the relationship was not safe. According to court documents, family members told investigators that abuse between the two began around late December or early January. Angelina told multiple family members that Black had hit her. Several relatives knew he had a gun. She stayed, as many do in such situations, perhaps hoping things would change, perhaps not knowing how to leave.
On the night of March 6, surveillance video from the motel shows Angelina, Black, and their daughter arriving at the room around 11 p.m. At 2:41 a.m., Black left. He returned at some point, then left again at 5:21 a.m. It was during that window, between his return and his final departure, that Angelina was shot in the face at close range.
Detective Peter McCall processed the scene. He noted a plastic case for a SAR 9mm semiautomatic handgun containing two empty magazines but no gun. He found a fired bullet on the bathroom floor in front of the vanity, believed to be the one that caused the injury. There was no exit wound. Fremont County Coroner Erin Ivie arrived, and when investigators rolled Angelina onto her back, they saw a bullet entry wound near the bridge of her nose next to her right eye.
Around it was a large area of stippling, tiny red-brown abrasions caused by unburned gunpowder hitting the skin. The pattern indicated the gun was fired from several inches to two feet away, not pressed against her skin. This was not a self-inflicted wound. This was homicide.
There were also signs of drug and alcohol use in the bathroom, details that speak to the chaos that had overtaken Angelina’s life in her final months. None of the motel neighbors reported hearing a gunshot or arguing, which suggests how quickly and quietly violence can happen behind closed doors.
Outside the room, a black 2017 Mitsubishi Outlander registered to Black was parked, but no keys were found inside. Black’s father arrived at the scene, concerned for his son. He told investigators that Black, Angelina, and their child lived at the motel and that Black had been renting the room since February 12. He did not explain how he became aware of what had happened.
Later that afternoon, around 4:08 p.m., the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office contacted Riverton Police to say Black was turning himself in. Officers retrieved him and took him into custody. Black’s father also turned over the gun, a black SAR 9mm semiautomatic handgun. He told police he found his son in an abandoned trailer on his property and urged him to “do what is right.” The serial number on the gun matched the case found in the motel room. Black was booked on a charge of second-degree murder, which in Wyoming carries a possible sentence of 20 years to life in prison.
During booking, officers noted a small cut on Black’s left thumb but no other injuries. He provided a breath alcohol sample roughly 12 hours after the crime, which showed a .06% reading. Officers searched the father’s property for the black hoodie Black had worn in the surveillance video, for the car keys, and for any ammunition, but found nothing.
The community of Riverton and the Arapaho people who knew and loved Angelina were left to grieve. On March 12, a Vigil Service with a Rosary was held at 7 p.m. at St. Stephen’s Catholic Church, followed by a wake at 92 Chief Black Coal Circle. The next morning, funeral services were held at 10 a.m. at the same church, with burial following at Arapaho Catholic Cemetery. In the days surrounding the services, the community gathered in Riverton’s City Park for a time of remembrance, sharing stories and supporting one another as they mourned a young woman taken far too soon.
Angelina Rose Bell was 24 years old. She was a daughter, a mother, a sister, and a friend. She loved her culture and her community with a reverence that showed in everything she did. She worked hard, showed up reliably, and treated people with kindness. She carried the teachings of her ancestors quietly but deeply. And she left behind a little girl who will spend the rest of her life trying to make sense of what she saw in that bathroom on a cold March morning.
That little girl’s words will echo through courtrooms and family gatherings for years to come. “Daddy was mad at Mommy.” “Mommy’s dead.” She spoke the truth as she understood it, and that truth is now part of the record, part of the story of Angelina’s death, part of the weight her family must carry.
Sterling Louis Black Jr. remains in custody, charged with second-degree murder. His case is ongoing. But no verdict, no sentence, no outcome will bring Angelina back. No punishment will erase what her daughter witnessed. No amount of time will fully heal the wound left by a bullet fired at close range in a small bathroom in a motel room on Federal Boulevard.
The community holds onto its memories. They remember Angelina at the Rusty Truck, at the Airport Café, at the Casino. They remember her quiet presence and her steady warmth. They remember a young woman who practiced her traditions and loved her people. They remember a mother who deserved so much more than the ending she got.
And somewhere, a little girl is growing up without her mommy, carrying memories she should never have had to make, trying to understand why Daddy was so mad.