Bixby rape case goes before multicounty grand jury
The state’s multicounty grand jury is now investigating the Bixby High School rape case.
Rogers County District Attorney Matt Ballard, the special prosecutor assigned to the case, and a handful of witnesses arrived early Wednesday morning at the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office.
A couple of star players on the Bixby Spartan football team were on hand, in addition to Bixby school board Vice President Lisa Owens and high-profile Tulsa defense attorney Shannon McMurray.
Those who later exited the building declined to comment. McMurray explained that a “gag order” prohibited them from commenting.
A status report on matters being examined by the grand jury is due out Thursday, the last day in January it will meet. The Attorney General’s Office oversees the grand jury’s work.
Superintendent Kyle Wood was forced out in a resignation agreement with the school board on Dec. 19.
The move came nearly three months after a student says he was raped with a pool cue for the second time at a high school football team event at the superintendent’s house.
The 16-year-old high school student has told law enforcement investigators that he was twice attacked with a pool cue, on Sept. 27 as well as on an undisclosed date in 2016, by his Spartans football teammates at team functions at the home of Wood, whose son also was on the team.
Multiple sources with direct knowledge of the situation have told the Tulsa World that nearly 10 Bixby High School football players were benched or kicked off the team for the remainder of the season amid the allegations.
Search warrants filed in court last week state that in addition to investigating a possible rape, the ongoing joint investigation by the special prosecutor’s office, Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation and Bixby police includes “whether there were efforts to avoid the mandatory reporting requirements” that require reporting suspected abuse to DHS, “as well as potential efforts to thwart a police investigation into the incident.”
In public court documents, investigators have stated that Bixby Athletic Director Jay Bittle took a written statement from the victim on Oct. 26 but they are aware of only one report of the assault being made to the Oklahoma Department of Human Services — on Nov. 10.
Records that investigators obtained through a search warrant at Bixby Public Schools included written statements from five juveniles “admitting their various levels of participation in the sexual assault of the victim and the video recording of the sexual assault.”
One juvenile and his parent came forward to police the night before investigators seized school employee and juvenile suspects’ cellphones and admitted that the boy video-recorded the sexual assault and consented to having his cellphone searched. They told police they were concerned about protecting potential evidence on the cellphone because a parent of one of the suspects “had recently offered to purchase” that juvenile’s cellphone.