Quinton funerals

Hundreds of people line up to enter the Quinton Elementary School gymnasium Saturday for the funerals of Paul, Emma, Mackennon and Lee Ogden.
Staff photo by Doug Russell

Tragedy in Quinton

from staff reports

QUINTON — It was a tragedy that sliced to the heart of the little town, but members of the community came together to remember their friends and family members, assuring each other that all was part of God's eternal plan.
Five members of the Ogden family died after a tractor-trailer rig plowed into their horse-drawn carriage on July 27.
Four of the family members lived in Quinton. The fifth, 18-year-old Colby Finch, was a nephew visiting from Texas.
Thirty-seven-year-old Paul Glenn Ogden, 28-year-old Lee Curtis Ogden, 4-year-old Emma Leigh Ogden and 5-year-old Mackennon Ralynn Ogden were thrown from the carriage and died at the scene of the accident, according to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol.
Finch died the next afternoon at St. Francis Medical Center in Tulsa.
"The death of people you know and love is something that's not easy to deal with. God needed them in Heaven. We'll never understand, but the bigger picture is that God always has a plan and always has a purpose," said Chelsea Brennen.
The driver of the tractor-trailer rig, Marvin Bowen, 38, Foyil, was not injured in the 10:40 p.m. accident. He told police he didn't see the wagon until it was too late. The carriage was outfitted with reflectors and small red lights that could be activated, but no headlights, the patrol said.
Brothers Paul and Lee Ogden and the girls were less than a mile from their home, traveling east on the highway when the tractor-trailer smashed into it from behind.
Both horses also died.
According to the patrol, the carriage was in the middle of the road, near a bend about four miles west of Quinton on state Highway 31, when it was hit.(more on this story in this week's Stigler News Sentinel)

Billy David Tackett

Five in, 10 out

By Doug Russell
News Editor
A McCurtain man previously convicted of killing a woman in LeFlore County pleaded no contest Monday to kidnapping and abusing another woman in 2010.
Billy David Tackett, 41, was sentenced to 15 years, with 10 of the 15 suspended, for kidnapping and to one year for domestic assault and battery.
The sentences are to be served concurrently, and Tackett was given credit for 341 days in the county jail. He was also ordered to pay $19,763.76, which includes $14,785.76 for the cost of his incarceration.
An affidavit filed in the case indicates that Tackett pulled a woman from a mobile home on Old Panther Road at about 3:30 a.m. Aug. 20. According to the affidavit, "While inside the truck Billy had a shotgun and started asking questions about her and a man … whom he thought she was sleeping with. He then told her she was going to die."
Tackett allegedly drove along country roads, punching the woman and pulling her hair. The woman told police that she jumped from the truck once, and Tackett ran over her leg.
He allegedly forced her back inside the vehicle and continued to beat her as he drove her to a house in the LeFlore County community of Milton, where he held her until releasing her on Aug. 22, admonishing her to say nothing of the beatings but to say, instead, that she'd been in a 4-wheeler accident.
She went to the police instead.
Tackett has a previous felony conviction for abusing a woman, but in that case, the victim died.
A LeFlore County man who followed the initial case said, "If I remember correctly, he killed his wife. Shot her in the head in the cab of a truck."
Tackett was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years on Feb. 18, 1998. Department of Corrections records show he was discharged from prison on Nov. 15, 2007.
Police contend that Tackett abused the women in both cases because he thought that they might have been seeing someone else.(more on this story in this week's Stigler News Sentinel)