Bubbaworld

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.