Routine Bigfoot Hunt in Oklahoma Ends With 3 Arrests, 1 Person Shot
A Sasquatch hunting expedition in Oklahoma ended in tragedy this weekend when one hunter accidentally shot another in the back. A subsequent investigation led to three arrests: the trigger-happy hunter, the trigger-happy hunter's father, and the trigger-happy hunter's wife.
The incident took place Saturday afternoon in Rogers County. According to Sheriff Scott Walton, two men claim they were hunting the mythical apelike creature when a “barking noise” caused one of the men, 21-year-old Omar Pineda, to turn and fire his weapon. Unfortunately for everyone, Pineda's friend happened to be standing in between the noise and Pineda, and was shot. The friend, while seriously injured, is expected to survive.
"When you start off with an explanation like that, do you believe anything after that?" Walton said, according to Oklahoma's News on 6.
The week just got worse for Pineda. After an investigation, the 21-year-old was arrested for reckless conduct with a firearm. No surprise there. But then sheriff's deputies arrested Pineda's father-in-law, Perry Don James. Apparently, James, who is a convicted felon, was concerned about gun charges, so he threw Pineda's weapon into nearby pond. James was booked on complaints of felon in possession of a firearm and destruction of evidence. Pineda's wife was then arrested for obstruction of justice, because she initially told police that someone else had been shooting at her husband and his friend.
"The aggravating part of this whole deal is that their dishonesty wasted several man hours of not only the Rogers County Sheriff's Office, but our partners at the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office," Walton said. "If [they] had just been factual, upfront and truthful with us and explained that this was truly an accident, as strange as it might sound, we would have went ahead and investigated and probably nobody would have [gone] to jail.”
Walton later added: "To our knowledge, [we've had] no Bigfoot sightings in Rogers County."