Bubbaworld

According to Tulsa Police, on November 9, 2009 Shemirah Mache Benson was sleeping on a couch with her 7-month-old son Dan Benson when her husband discovered the infant unconscious between his mother and the back of the couch. The boy’s father called 911, however the child had already died of suffocation.

On January 6, 2010, prosecutors filed a charge of second-degree manslaughter against Benson. On February 4th, Benson was arrested and jailed in lieu of bond totaling $500,000. At her initial court hearing, bond was reduced to $100,000 and conditioned upon Benson not being unattended around any child under the age of one-year-old. Benson did not make bail and remained jailed.

On March 29, 2010, Shemirah Mache Benson appeared in Tulsa County District Court for arraignment. At her arraignment Benson waived her right to trial and pleaded guilty to the second degree manslaughter charge in the death of her son Dan Benson.

Following her guilty plea, District Judge William C. Kellough set sentencing for May 10th and, without out objection from the prosecution, released Benson from jail on her own recognizance with ankle monitor pending sentencing.

Benson faces a maximum sentence of up to four years in prison.

At first glance, one might feel pity for Benson and believe that probation would be a fair and just sentence. And there is merit in that view.

Until…

One realizes that 7-month-old Dan Benson is the second child Shemirah Benson has killed under similar, if not identical circumstances.

According to police, in May 2006, 3-month-old Daniyah Benson, another of Benson’s children, died in a similar sleeping arrangement. At that time, Benson was reportedly warned of the dangers of co-sleeping, however no charges were filed in Daniyah Benson’s death.

Regardless of whether Shemirah Benson does or does not receive jail time as part of her sentence, it would seem not only logical but necessary that she also receive long-term probation conditioned upon her never being permitted to be alone with a small child ever again.

Shemirah Benson didn’t learn from the tragic death of one child and it is unlikely she has learned from the death of the second.

Hopefully the court will insure there is no third tragic death owing to the negligence of Shemirah Benson.

If the allegations against Thomas Dale Haga are any indication, Haga may have taken dumping one’s spouse to the ultimate extreme.

Even for Oklahoma…

Haga, 55, a Pawnee County resident, is in jail charged with a felony count of unlawful removal of a dead body and a misdemeanor count of neglect of burial.

And not just any dead body, but the body of his wife Clarice Haga, who was last seen July 4, 2007, at the Black Gold Motel in Pawhuska, where Thomas Haga reportedly rented a room for a two-night stay.

What, according to DNA testing, is the body of Clarice Haga was found July 15, 2009, at the bottom of a cistern located between Maramec and Skeede in rural Pawnee County, Oklahoma. The body was reportedly under two feet of water at the bottom of the 15 foot-deep cistern. A cistern with a cedar tree stuffed into it to hold the body underwater.

Although DNA testing proved the body was that of Clarice Haga, the State Medical Examiner’s Office was unable to determine the cause and manner of her death due to decomposition of the woman’s body.

We can’t say if Thomas Haga is guilty of the charges he faces. That will have to be decided in a court of law. However, we can say that IF Haga is found guilty, there’s no doubt that he has managed to redefine the phrase “dumping one’s spouse”…

Exploding meth labs have become as much a part of Oklahoma as hot summers, cold winters, tornadoes and of course intra-state sports rivalries. Few Tulsans are surprised to learn of yet another meth lab explosion as they have become some commonplace.

However, when the exploding meth lab is located across the street from a Tulsa Police Department division sub-station it does come under the heading of PRICELESS….

On Sunday night at about 9:00 pm something went BOOM at America’s Value Inn located at 10117 East 11th Street, in Tulsa.

We have no idea if anyone at the Mingo Valley Division of the Tulsa Police Department, located at 10122 E. 11th Street, in Tulsa “caught wind” of anything unusual before the BOOOM, but firefighters arriving on the scene found flames billowing from the first and second floors of the motel.

As investigators sifted through the rubble of the units destroyed in the explosion and fire, they did find “meth-related items” according to Fire Department spokesman Bill French. The estimate of the damage from the BOOM and fire is $400,000.

Unfortunately the suspected meth cooks took it on the lam when the fire started and before things went BOOM. Evidently there were no Tulsa Police officers handy as the three men made their hasty exit from the area.

It is somewhat amusing to note that the scene of Tulsa’s latest meth lab explosion is not only across the street from the Tulsa cops but is also located between “God’s Light Shining Church” and “Southern Nazarene University”.

The latter of which, interestingly enough, shares a building with the Tulsa Office of the National Weather Service which probably should have issued one of those weather alerts for “partly cloudy with a chance of exploding meth labs” for Sunday night…

Some openly speculate that Tulsa, which recently laid-off about one-sixth of its police force, is well on its way to becoming “the Detroit of the Great Plains” and recent events tend to support that speculation.

Case in point – Saturday night, well actually Sunday morning at 3:00 am on February 28, 2010.

Between 75 and 100 people were reportedly milling around the Chicken Hut restaurant at Apache and N. Rockford waiting for their take out order when shots rang out and 27-year-old Valentino Verner fell to the ground with multiple gunshot wounds.

Despite the large number of people at the crime scene, apparently only one person saw fit to call 911 to report the shooting. When police arrived on the scene they found Verner lying on the ground, bleeding in front of the restaurant’s pick-up window, as Chicken Hut patrons stepped over the wounded man to pick up their food orders.

Tulsa police had a difficult time getting through the crowd to provide aid to the victim and when they did get through they found that no one was trying to help the injured man although some in the crowd reportedly became aggressive and angry when police attempted to aid Verner before an ambulance arrived.

When EMTs arrived it did not get any better as customers of the restaurant shoved past the medical personnel to get to the take out window to pick up their orders. Once medical personnel managed to get Verner loaded into an ambulance he was taken to St. John Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

When police questioned the crowd they found only one person, reportedly a relative of the victim, who had any information about the shooting and he only told police that the shooter was a black male wearing a hoodie and that he fled on foot after shooting Verner.

Reportedly none of the other 100 or so witnesses saw anything and refused to cooperate with police in their investigation of Verner’s murder, the ninth homicide in Tulsa this year.

Phillip John Ortega, 56, has been arrested in Oklahoma for allegedly exposing himself to an Oklahoma City woman.

It is alleged that when Ortega approached the woman he was wearing a woman’s pink single piece swimsuit, panty hose and makeup.

The alleged victim told police that she was smoking a cigarette on her porch when the man, whom she at first thought was a woman, walked toward her and asked her “Where’d my friend go?”

Reportedly the woman asked the man to go away at which point he allegedly used his left hand to pull the bathing suit to the side and his right hand to pull out his genitals, shaking them and saying, “Hey, look at this.”

The cops found Ortega walking nearby, which probably didn’t taking much looking for a man in a woman’s pink swimsuit, and hauled him off to jail.

Reportedly, Ortega is on probation for a six-year suspended sentence related to a 2007 felony attempted kidnapping case in Oklahoma County.

To some it may appear to be getting strange when Sequoyah County Commissioner Michael D. “Mike” Huff, 60, (pictured above) pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges in Arkansas and was sentenced to 10 days in the Sebastian County Detention Center and ordered to pay $490 in fines and court costs.

Usually when County Commissioners from Oklahoma enter either no contest or guilty pleas it’s to felony charges and in federal court in Oklahoma.

However, Sequoyah County Commissioner Mike Huff’s case is different than the typical case involving a county commissioner from Oklahoma, cases usually involving fraud and corruption.

Mike Huff was arrested on June 11th, in Fort Smith, Arkansas on misdemeanor charges of patronizing a prostitute and refusing to submit to arrest. This after he was busted in a prostitution sting conducted by the Fort Smith Police Department. Reportedly, five other “alleged john” were busted along with Huff during the sting.

It was alleged that Commissioner Huff took what he thought was a prostitute to the “Relax Inn”, a Fort Smith hotel, where he was subsequently busted. Huff was taken to the Sebastian County Detention Center from which he was released on a $2,500 bond.

On June 15th, Huff appeared for arraignment on the charges and entered a plea of not guilty. A court date was set for August 6th. On August 6th Huff appeared in Fort Smith District Court and entered his no contest plea.

Huff’s attorney Eddie Christian Sr. asked the judge to set Huff’s surrender date 30 days in the future. The judge ordered Huff to surrender to the Sebastian County Detention Center to begin serving his sentence on September 3rd.

Huff, who was was elected Sequoyah County District 3 Commissioner in 2006, is serving a four-year term.

Huff’s official duties include oversight of the Sequoyah County Jail. Since he will be getting a close up and personal look at how the folks in Arkansas run their jails, that might prove beneficial to the tax payers of Sequoyah County. If nothing else, he may at least come back with a clue.

In the mean time, Commissioner Huff might want to forget the “Viva Viagra” jingle and try to remember that he is married.

At least for the time being…