Double Child Murders Shock Community - With Video
Oklahoma Community on Edge as Cops Search for Girls’ Killer
Residents of a rural Oklahoma community are on edge as investigators search for suspects and a motive in the brutal double murder of young best friends shot dead along a county road.
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation officials still don’t know who shot Taylor Dawn Paschal-Placker, 13, and Skyla Jade Whitaker, 11, on Sunday afternoon as they walked down a dirt road to a bridge about a quarter-mile from Taylor’s home in Weleetka, Okla.
Special Agent Ben Rosser on Tuesday said that though they were interviewing people in connection with the crime, they had no suspects and no apparent motive.
“We’ve interviewed a number of people over the last couple of days but so far there’s been no persons of interest,” Rosser said Tuesday. “Nobody we can put a finger on and point out and says this guy’s good for it.”
The girls’ bodies were found a few miles from Interstate 40 and U.S. 75, but investigators think that a local may have shot the girls.
“It’s such an isolated area although there’s quite a bit of activity that goes on by the local folks down there,” Rosser said. “So that’s why we’re thinking it’s local people.”
Okfuskee County Sheriff Jack Choate is telling parents to keep an eye on their children.
“We don’t know what the threat is, but if it were me, I wouldn’t let my kids out walking unless there was other people around, you know, that you knew,” he said. “Just natural security for your own kids.”
The lack of a suspect has worried residents in this community of approximately 1,000.
“Believe it or not, I have never pulled any shades in my house and I keep my doors unlocked,” Dena Priddy, a teacher’s aide at the school the victims attended, told the Associated Press.
Priddy told the AP she wouldn’t let her 14-year-old daughter out of the house and was taking extra precautions. “I have guns loaded,” she said.
Taylor’s grandfather, Peter Placker, discovered the bodies on Sunday after trying to call a cell phone the girls had with them. He called police from that phone, Rosser said.
An autopsy found the girls had died of multiple gunshot wounds to the chest and face, Chief Investigator Kevin Rowland of the Oklahoma Chief Medical Examiner’s office told FOXNews.com.
Police do not think the girls were molested — they were found clothed in their T-shirts and shorts — but they are leaving all options open at this point.
“We have thought from the worst-case scenario — just a haphazard shooting — to they possibly walked down to meet someone, to possibly they walked down there, even though it’s a short distance, they may have interrupted something,” Rosser said. “So we’re looking at everything right now.”
Placker and his wife had custody of Taylor, who called them “mom” and “dad.” On Tuesday, Placker remembered Taylor as a straight-A student who quickly made friends when the family moved to Weleetka from Oklahoma City several years ago.
“She touched everybody,” he told FOXNews.com. “Everybody down here loved her.”
The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation is offering a $14,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer or killers. The Bank of Commerce in Weleetka has set up accounts to help raise money for the girls’ burials.
Investigators were to hold a 3 p.m. ET press conference Wednesday to offer updates to the case.
(FOX)
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CONSERVATIVE~”Priddy told the AP she wouldn’t let her 14-year-old daughter out of the house and was taking extra precautions. “I have guns loaded,” she said.”
LIBERAL~”and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest…they get bitter, they cling to guns” ~B. Hussein Obama, Democratic candidate for President of the United States of America
June 11th, 2008 at 6:28 amHeart breaking.
This is the kind of thing that a local ‘posse’ needs to take care of. Hunt them down and deliver justice.
There is a growing element of what I consider ‘feral’ humans, and the hand wringing liberal responses to them are futile.
June 11th, 2008 at 6:45 amThis is the kind of thing that a local ‘posse’ needs to take care of. Hunt them down and deliver justice.
This is less than 100 miles from my house. And if it were possible, I would happily join the ‘posse’ and deliver an appropriate form of justice, costing the tax payers nothing including burial fee.
What’s most pathetic about this one is that unless the local news hasn’t been forthcoming, there doesn’t even appear to be a motive as these were simply young girls taking a stroll down an old country road.
It appears if as if some sick f*** shot these kids as easily as someone would shoot at a snake. As somebody with two daughters of my own, there is part of me that feels completely helpless in protecting them. Anybody that is worthy of being a parent will attest that at some time, you have to give your kids a measure of freedom to enjoy the world and grow without constant supervision. And that thought is terrifying, even for a crass SOB like me.
June 11th, 2008 at 7:35 amSteve:
I agree 100%. There is a big majority of people in our society that need to be taken care of, as in removed from society.
Those poor girls.
June 11th, 2008 at 8:23 am