Nevada
Nevada Teen Found Dead After Friend Said He Dropped Her Off To Meet “Cowboy” | Oxygen
Britney Ujlaky was a free spirit.
The beautiful 16-year-old loved riding on horseback through the picturesque hills of Spring Creek, Nevada, where she lived. She was close with her friends, wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself, and had an exceptionally tight bond with her gold-miner father, according to Dateline: Unforgettable.
But on Sunday, March 8, 2020, Britney mysteriously vanished, leaving her family desperate for answers.
“Some stories are memorable for their twists, or their characters, or where they happened,” correspondent Josh Mankiewicz said in the “Open Desert” episode of Dateline: Unforgettable. “This one checked all three boxes.
“Spring Creek is in Elko County, Nevada, a place I’d never been,” he added. “It’s genuine cowboy country and its natural beauty is stunning. It’s also where the Ujlaky family came face to face with a cold hard truth: You can do everything possible to keep your child safe and sometimes that still won’t be enough.”
Who was Britney Ujlaky?
Growing up in the rural wilderness, Britney was a girl who loved horses and the rodeo, and often displayed her own blend of cowboy bravado.
“The way that she carried herself was very like you don’t want to mess with me, like she stood up straight and she squared her soldiers. She never slouched,” her best friend Saquarra Ashby remembered.
The high schooler loved to spend time with her friends and had a close relationship with her father, Jim Ujlaky, whom she lived with after her parents divorced.
“From the day she was born, she kind of saved my life,” Jim told Mankiewicz through tears. “I was on drugs and I was single, lived a party life and everything, making really good money and just living it up and (the) first breath she took, (I) looked at it, and straightened my life up, sobered up and devoted my life to raising my kids.”
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The day Britney Uklaky disappeared
Sunday, March 8, 2020 started out just like any day for the Uklaky family. Britney, a self-appointed music critic of her dad’s heavy metal band File Not Found, accompanied him to his weekly band practice.
“She’d storm in like she owned the place,” Jim remembered of her frequent advice, telling the band members every time they missed a note or didn’t sing something right.
But she was also a typical teen and eventually tired of the middle-aged musicians. Britney arranged for her friend Bryce Dickey to pick her up at a nearby park in the mid-afternoon, promising her dad that she’d be home later, likely even beating him home from practice.
Jim grabbed dinner with the band and then drove home, calling Britney along the way. But his calls went unanswered, something that was highly unusual for the teen.
“After the third time, [I] started getting a little panicky,” Jim said.
It was now nearly 7 p.m. and Jim hadn’t heard back from Britney. He called her mom, Alisha, thinking maybe she’d gone to visit her, but she hadn’t heard from their daughter either.
Britney’s younger brother James Jr. called Dickey to find out what time he last saw her.
“He told me he’d dropped her off with some new friend at the high school,” James Jr. said.
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Bryce Dickey tells story of cowboy
Dickey later told the same story to the Elko County Sheriff’s Office, insisting that after hanging out with her for about three and a half hours that afternoon, he dropped Britney off at the school.
“He said that she wanted to get dropped off at the Spring Creek High School because she was going to meet a new friend and he saw her get into a truck with an unknown cowboy,” Nick Stake, then a detective, told Dateline.
Dickey — who had been a close friend of Britney’s since middle school and acted as a big brother of sorts — described the truck as an older model green Ford F-150 and said the man was a tall, white cowboy, adding that Britney never told him the stranger’s name.
As news of Britney’s disappearance began to spread, her mom got a tip on social media that her daughter may have been out with a man named JT.
That tracked with what Ashby knew about her friend.
“She had started talking to a guy named JT,” she recalled. “She had told me about him.”
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Detectives set out to try to track down the mysterious stranger driving a green pickup truck, who possibly went by JT. But after combing through databases and DMV files and chasing down false leads, they weren’t able to find anyone that appeared to match the description.
They also knew that Britney had been bullied by a group of girls at her high school and found video of Britney getting into a physical altercation with two of them at a rodeo about a year before she disappeared.
They considered the possibility that Britney had been the victim of foul play at the hands of one of the girls, but that theory didn’t pan out either.
Search widens for Britney Ujlaky
Investigators and Britney’s family launched an extensive search effort through the vast Elko County wilderness. Britney’s friends, including Dickey, came out in droves to try to find any sign of the missing teen.
Jim took his truck, driving through the remote woods looking for any sign of her. By then, he had a sense that his daughter was no longer alive.
“We’re looking in the sky for birds cause we were out looking for a body,” he said. “We couldn’t see anything, couldn’t find anything.”
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Britney Ujlaky’s body found
But on the third day of the search, someone stumbled on a blue tarp and discovered the teen’s body hidden underneath it. She’d been strangled, had a single knife wound to the neck and there were signs of a possible sexual assault.
Britney’s mom Alicia was at the sheriff’s office when Stake got the news.
“I couldn’t walk,” she said. “My legs didn’t work and he just had this look on his face, just this, such tortured look on his face and he’s like, ‘I gotta go, I gotta go, are you ok?’”
For Jim, it brought a sense of relief, knowing his daughter wasn’t out in the elements any longer, but he also deeply grieved the loss of his daughter.
“I lost the only person who ever truly loved me, without any conditions, nothing,” he said. “My son loved me too, but she was the first born and you know living the life I led didn’t think anyone ever cared. She did.”
At the crime scene, detectives found what looked like chewing tobacco on the ground and recovered a used condom about 60 feet away from the body.
Investigators shift focus back to Bryce Dickey
After still finding no sign of the mysterious stranger that Britney allegedly went off with, detectives turned their attention to the last known person to see the teen alive: Dickey.
Dickey was two years older than Britney and had been a close friend for years.
“He’s kind of just one of those geeky kids, just a shy little cowboy kid that would kick his feet and look at the ground when you talked to him,” Britney’s mom, Alisha, recalled. “He’d come sit over at the house while Britney was getting her makeup on to go to the rodeos. He was always her ride to places.”
The family had no reason to worry when Britney left that day with Dickey, since she had done the same thing so many other days. Britney even posted a picture of the pair smiling from Dickey’s truck on the last day of her life.
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Investigators noted that the desert landscape in the photo was eerily similar to their crime scene. They called Dickey in for more questioning and he agreed to hand over his phone and give a DNA sample. It turned out to be a match to the condom and the chewing tobacco left at the scene.
Surveillance footage also confirmed he’d been lying to investigators about where he was that day and put his truck going in the direction of the crime scene, not the high school.
Confronted with the information, Dickey admitted to having sex with Britney, but said they both immediately regretted it. He insisted he didn’t kill her.
Bryce Dickey charged in Britney Ujlaky’s murder
Dickey was arrested and charged with sexual assault and murder.
Authorities were never able to determine exactly why Dickey turned on his friend that afternoon, but those who knew him suspect he may have been tired of being relegated to the friend zone.
“You know, unfortunately, or maybe even fortunately, we’ll never know exactly what happened, but I know that the evidence supported that Britney and Bryce went out there willingly,” Elko County District Attorney Tyler Ingram said. “I think Bryce didn’t get what Bryce wanted and he took it into this own hands.”
Dickey went on trial in May of 2022 and was found guilty of murder and sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole at the age of 64 years old.
For Jim, it could never be enough of a punishment.
“There’s no justice,” he said. “She’s not coming back.”
LAS VEGAS (FOX5) — According to data from the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), Nevada shed 7,100 construction jobs, a total of 6.4% of the workforce, in the last 12 months. It represents the percentage loss in the county.
When compared month to month, the Silver State saw similar drops, with 4,400 jobs lost from July to August, a 4.1% decline. Nationally, association officials noted a difficulty in filling open positions, with 92% of firms reporting having a hard time finding workers. 45% of firms delayed projects due to labor shortages.
“Most firms are struggling to find enough workers to hire amid persistent labor shortages,” said Ken Simonson, chief economist for the AGC. “These labor shortages are the number one cause for delayed construction projects, according to our recent survey.”
“The construction officials urged federal leaders to boost funding for construction education and training and create more lawful pathways for people to enter the country to work in construction,” the report said.
The report follows data from real estate website Redfin, which indicates that Las Vegas is the fastest-cooling U.S. housing market, with home sales down 10.2% year over year.
Copyright 2025 KVVU. All rights reserved.
Country music star Bailey Zimmerman was forced to cancel the final show of his “New To Country Tour” because of safety concerns at the Rio Vista Outdoor Amphitheater in Laughlin, Nevada, Parade reports.
In an Instagram post featuring a simple black backdrop, Zimmerman expressed his disappointment about the cancellation.
“This is something an artist never wants to tell their fans,” he wrote on Saturday. “I am beyond disappointed, and I’m sorry, but we have to cancel our show tonight in Laughlin, NV.”
The cancellation stemmed from what Zimmerman described as “unforeseen local production limitations” and an unsafe stage. He emphasized that the decision had nothing to do with him or his team, stating they arrived “fully prepared to end the New To Country Tour the right way.”
“The safety of y’all, my band, and my crew is the most important thing to me, and I just can’t put y’all at risk,” Zimmerman explained in his post.
He added, “I really hate disappointing you all, and I hate ending the tour this way, but like I said, it’s what I have to do.”
Fans who purchased tickets to the Laughlin concert will receive full refunds to their original method of payment, with payments expected to appear within 14-21 days. Ticket holders with questions are advised to contact their ticket providers directly.
Despite the disappointing conclusion to his current tour, Zimmerman has already announced his next venture. The “Different Night Same Rodeo Tour” is scheduled to begin on Feb. 19, and it will cover more than 30 cities across the United States, including Knoxville, Boston, Atlanta, Fort Worth, Nashville and Toronto.
The tour is set to conclude June 20.
The “New To Country Tour,” which began on June 6 in Indianapolis, featured special guests Dylan Marlowe and Drew Baldridge.
Fans responded supportively to Zimmerman’s announcement, with one commenting, “I’m so sorry, BZ! I know you care soooo much about your fans and team. This must have been such a hard choice.”
Another added, “Sad, but you and your crew need to be safe.”
This story was written with the assistance og AI.
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Nevada
Nevada protects consumers from utility shutoffs in extreme heat. Advocates want more. – The Nevada Independent
As electricity costs grow steeper and Nevada summers grow deadlier, advocates are sounding alarms about the risks to low-income people who can’t afford consistent air conditioning in dangerous temperatures.
Between May and August 2025, there were at least 114 heat-related deaths in Clark County alone, according to the county coroner’s office.
This summer’s scourge of heat-related death and illness mirrors a nationwide trend. Recent studies show that extreme summertime heat is now the leading cause of weather-related deaths, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
In 2023, the death certificates of more than 2,300 people who died in the summer mention the effects of excessive heat, the highest number in 45 years of records, according to an Associated Press analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. Three-quarters of those deaths occurred in five states: Arizona, Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Nevada.
According to the nonprofit organization Climate Central, Las Vegas and Reno are the two fastest-warming cities nationwide. Las Vegas’ environment puts residents at particular danger from extreme heat. The city’s sprawl has created a “heat island,” where heat-absorbing roads and buildings further increase temperatures.
Yanci Hill works to protect her fellow Nevadans from extreme heat as part of the Latin-focused environmental group Chispa Nevada, which advocates for less expensive utility costs and more transparent utility policies for Nevadans. She experienced extreme heat herself in July 2024, when the central air-conditioning unit in her one-story home in Henderson broke.
Hill, her husband and their 18-year-old daughter spent five days virtually trapped inside their home. “It was 113 degrees outside,” she explained, “and 102 degrees inside. We were sleeping with cold compresses on our foreheads and ice packs under our pillows.” The heat got so bad, Hill said, one of the family cats fell ill with liver disease.
Hill said one of her friends once had her utilities shut off because she was a few dollars short on her bill.
The federal government has long recognized the need to ensure Americans can access their utilities in extreme weather. Since 1980, the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) has provided funds to state governments to subsidize residents who have trouble affording their heating or cooling bills. But according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA), which represents the program’s state managers, roughly 85 percent of the program’s resources are used for heating in the winter. That leaves less support available nationally for households requiring cooling.
“How do we protect vulnerable households both during periods of extreme heat and extreme cold?” asked Wolfe. “The rules haven’t caught up.”
Nationally, the cost of electricity has risen at twice the pace of the average cost of living, exacerbating this problem. According to NEADA, almost one in every five of the poorest families lacks consistent access to cooling.
To supplement the LIHEAP program’s efforts and keep utilities operating in sweltering heat, many states bar utility companies from disconnecting services in certain temperatures or during certain months.
Nevada is one of 20 states that offer protections from utility shutoffs during extreme heat and one of 41 states that offer the same protections during extreme cold. According to the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN), utilities cannot be disconnected when the temperature is above 105 degrees. If customers are elderly or disabled, that threshold drops to 95 degrees. Utility disconnections also must be delayed for 30 days if a resident is experiencing a medical emergency.
But Olivia Tanager of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, one of Nevada’s largest environmental organizations, said she believes the state must do more.
Some states have their temperature-based protections kick in at a lower threshold. Arizona, for instance, prevents utilities from being shut off during summer months or whenever it hits 95 degrees.
“I think a lower threshold — in the 92 or 95 degree area — would be much more reasonable for Nevada, because we also know, especially in Southern Nevada, the heat disparities between different neighborhoods are very extreme,” said Tanager.
In this year’s legislative session, a bill that went even further — prohibiting utility cutoffs from May 1 to Oct. 31 — died without a hearing.
Along with more expansive time- or temperature-based protections, environmental and consumer advocates have encouraged the state to provide more robust financial assistance to low-income families. Nevada is one of 26 states plus Washington, D.C., that offer assistance with summer energy bills, partnering with the federally funded LIHEAP to provide support to consumers through the Energy Assistance Program (EAP). NV Energy, which controls the majority of utilities in Southern Nevada, also oversees the Special Assistance Fund for Energy (SAFE) program, which is intended to supplement state and federal assistance.
But Nevada is not one of the 21 states with explicit policies protecting low-income families from utility disconnections during summer months. Such disconnections are only barred if the temperature is above 105 degrees. But even if families keep their utilities on in such intense heat, they must foot the bill. A public utilities commission spokesperson told The Nevada Independent in a statement that Nevada places “a moratorium on disconnections during periods of extreme temperatures; the regulations do not exempt customers from paying utility bills incurred during extreme temperature periods.”
Residents are only allowed to receive EAP funds once annually, which Tanager says further prevents the program from becoming a long-term solution to an affordability crisis.
“While we do have resources, and while we appreciate those resources existing, we know that it’s not working for everybody,” she said.
Tanager’s Sierra Club and Hill’s Chispa Nevada are part of the Nevada Environmental Justice Coalition, which sent a group of activists to the state legislative session in April 2025 to advocate for greater transparency and affordability concerning utilities. They petitioned successfully for the passage of AB442, which requires the Public Utilities Commission to report quarterly data on when and where utility services are being disconnected, and AB452, which requires greater transparency around the setting of utility rates.
“AB452 was really about consumer protections — how do we know what we’re paying for as energy consumers?” said Assm. Tracy Brown-May, who sponsored the bill. “So that we know when [Nevada utility companies] purchase that natural gas, the cost of it is not all immediately passed onto the rate payer, with no data or information as to why.”
In February 2025, NV Energy proposed a revenue increase that would spike rates up to 9 percent, a move they justified by pointing to last year’s expensive heat waves. The Public Utilities Commission, forced to delay August public hearings on the matter due to the government’s recent cyberattack, is expected to vote on the proposed rate hike next week.
Tanager, for her part, said she hopes that the commission votes against the hike.
“The utility companies are bringing in record profits year-after-year, but Nevadans continue to be squeezed more and more,” she stated. “Several percentage points of people in each ZIP code are unable to pay their utility bill each year, which is, in my opinion, just disgusting.”
Cora Lewis of The Associated Press contributed to this article.
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