Austin Haley Update
Cleveland County prosecutors are offering deferred sentences to two former Noble police officers, Paul Bradley Rogers and Robert Shawn Richardson who are charged with second degree 
manslaughter in the death of five year old Austin Haley on August 3, 2007.
Austin was feeding fish from a dock when the infamous snake killers of the Noble Police Department fired two shots at a non-poisonous snake that was stuck in a birdhouse in a residential neighborhood. One of the shots hit the water in front of Austin, the second struck Austin in the head, killing him.
Little Austin Haley died in front of his two year old brother Dalton, and his grandfather, Jack Tracy, as a result of the actions of these twoformer law enforcement officers idiots with guns. Austin's family is still grieving.
According to James Haley, the idiots will be fined $1000, lose their law enforcement license, and will be put on probation. No jail time will be served, and most appalling of all, after two years have passed, they will be able under Oklahoma law to have the offense expunged from their records. This means that they could return to a position in law enforcement.
If we can do nothing else, let us make certain that a google search performed after a job interview will turn up these officer's names and connect them with this irresponsible and thoroughly unnecessary death of an innocent child. Let us make certain that Paul Bradley Rogers, Robert Shawn Richardson and the other officer on the scene, Michelle Key, have their negligence, incompetence and unsafe gun handling available through a simple googling of their names.
Assistant District Attorney David Brockman can be contacted at:
David M. Brockman OBA# 16109
District Attorney's Office
201 S. Jones, Ste 300
Norman, OK 73069
321-8268 360-4840
brockman@okdist21.org
manslaughter in the death of five year old Austin Haley on August 3, 2007. Austin was feeding fish from a dock when the infamous snake killers of the Noble Police Department fired two shots at a non-poisonous snake that was stuck in a birdhouse in a residential neighborhood. One of the shots hit the water in front of Austin, the second struck Austin in the head, killing him.
Little Austin Haley died in front of his two year old brother Dalton, and his grandfather, Jack Tracy, as a result of the actions of these two
According to James Haley, the idiots will be fined $1000, lose their law enforcement license, and will be put on probation. No jail time will be served, and most appalling of all, after two years have passed, they will be able under Oklahoma law to have the offense expunged from their records. This means that they could return to a position in law enforcement.
If we can do nothing else, let us make certain that a google search performed after a job interview will turn up these officer's names and connect them with this irresponsible and thoroughly unnecessary death of an innocent child. Let us make certain that Paul Bradley Rogers, Robert Shawn Richardson and the other officer on the scene, Michelle Key, have their negligence, incompetence and unsafe gun handling available through a simple googling of their names.
Assistant District Attorney David Brockman can be contacted at:David M. Brockman OBA# 16109
District Attorney's Office
201 S. Jones, Ste 300
Norman, OK 73069
321-8268 360-4840
brockman@okdist21.org
Labels: Austin Haley
posted by Xavier at 11:06 AM
12 Comments:
All I can say is..There is a double standard. If it had been any civilian that had pulled the trigger, you could imagine the uproar and indignation that would have followed, let along full blown persecution by the justice system and media.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but in most states the trial judge has to approve any plea bargain.
Who is the Judge, and can we put pressure on him to not accept the plea?
Cops.....what are we gon'na do about them? Anymore they want'a be
idolized as our saviors. My best friend going on 40 years now was a cop for 25 years. He was and still is a good dude, but he is only human. I met a lot of good LEO's thru him and some not so good. You're right about a double standard. Those two idiots should always have a record and "never"
be allowed to be a cop again.
This possible plea agreement only compounds this family's unimaginable grief. It's disheartening to say the least that such reckless disregard for human life is going to be essentially ignored by the very system that's responcible for justice; and it's all because the shooters in this case were Police Officers. That there is a double standard being applied here can't be over emphasized. The District Attorney is making it clear, that in Nobel Oklahoma, Police Officers who violate the law will not be punished by the criminal justice system using the same standard that would be applied to any civilian defendant. Indeed, that mere probation and a fine are the extent of the punishment being handed out by the DA under this agreement, almost seems to condone what happened in this case.
This agreement means that if another reckless shooting death were to occur in Nobel by a civilian defendant, then that person’s lawyer will be able to point to this case as a legal precedent for why the shooter should not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Through this plea agreement, the District Attorney is sending a dangerous message of irresponsibility to every resident of this town, and it is my sincere hope that any plan the DA has for presenting this plea agreement in court gets overridden by the presiding judge.
This is definitely a sad story all around, first for the loss of a life, second for the fact that these two officers surely had no ill-intentions. They definitely made a terrible mistake and should have to pay the consequences.
What an awful tragedy.
"no jail time" ... okay, works for me.
Hang 'em.
I have been reading your post for several months now and I have wanted to let so many people know what we know. We have had to wait until the prelim trial was waived to let everyone know what is going on with the case. Of course you have heard we are not happy with the deal to put it mildly. When we took this case to the Cleveland County DA Greg Mashburn, he did not seem to think that any charges were waranted. But he thought that maybe some probationary period might be in order. So we did not agree from the get go. We immediately made it known that we wanted to see jail time happen. What we really wanted is to see a trial happen, but over the months we have found that the DA and his office seem to not want to go to trial for the reason that since he was so graciously given his office by the local FOP, he does not want to put away one of their finest. In other words, we do not think that he would put 100% of his efforts or his office efforts into a trial.
It seems like no one wants to address the fact and the stupidity of shooting a snake that was stuck in a bird house. Much less a non-poisonous snake. The snake in question being a black rat snake, by the way, at 2:30 the next morning was still stuck in the bird house and was removed by a Norman Animal control officer. The snake was never hit by a bullet, the stupid rookie missed twice. The second bullet hitting my son. These guys stepped over a shovel, a hoe and some hedge clippers to use a gun to try and hit the snake. They never used those garden tools. Michelle Key the first officer on the scene tried to use the handle of the hoe to no avail, and then when the boy cops showed up, it was time to show off. Officer Robert Shawn Richardson said and I quote from the OSBI report "I guess we'll have to shoot it" then the rookie Paul Bradley Rogers said "I'll do it, I just got out of CLEET training". I am appaulled at the next bit of information. The rookie said "Fire in the hole" before his first shot. This was a joke to them, they were showing off for the girl cop.
These guys were not interested in doing things right this night. If they would have, things would have been different. My husband was in his shop not more than 60 yards away with his sliding doors open with music up loud, I was mowing our front yard with a push mower the same distance away, my father had just picked up our boys to go fishing at the pond, they had been there 5 minutes when the first shot rang out, 6 seconds later the second shot came. My father two months over a stroke he had, could barely muster the strength to lift my 50lb 5 year old son plus keep my 2 year old in check while they climbed up the hill to get to the 4 wheeler. We did not know what had happened, until 2 minutes later when he drove up to me in our front yard. I yelled "What", Jack, my husband, came running to find our son bleeding from the head, knowing his life was gone from the first look at his injury. He yelled, what happened, He then began running around yelling "who shot my son?" Finally we heard some people coming from behind some trees, they were wandering what had happened. There were two of the cops, plus some neighbors. They acted like they did not know what was going on, and we were too messed up in our heads to even think it was cops that shot our son. We did not find this out until the Noble Police Chief, Ben Daves, came to the hospital to tell us. These cops stayed as far away from the carnage they created as they could. They did not even see my son or the fatal injury they caused.
The neighbor that originally called the police about the snake, seems to be siding with the cops, they got to her some how. She won't even talk to us. Her 16 year old daughter got on the internet and fished up some photos of a rattlesnake and told the cops thats what the snake was. The birdhouse was not even in her backyard. It was her neighbors back yard. This neighbor has been extremely stand offish to us. Not even allowing us to talk to her daughter about what happened, we know that both of them are witnesses, other neighbors of theirs saw them watching the cops as they performed their "duties". The whole mess has turned our lives upside down. My son, Dalton, relives this day everyday. I relive this day everyday. My husband relives this everyday. The only way we have gotten through these days is God. We know that God has our son. We know that God did not take our son from us. We know that God did not cause this to happen. It was the cops, their pride and arrogance killed my son. The cop thinking he could hit a moving target killed my son, the sergeant cop who said lets shoot it killed my son. Continue praying for us as this is still so very difficult for our family. Thank you so much for the uplifting comments. We read them often. Please, help us get the word out. April 30th at 8:45 a.m. is the court date in front of Judge Lucas at Norman, Oklahoma.
This is a video link of my father telling about the tragedy of losing my son. It is heart-wrenching to our family. Cut and paste into the address box:
http://downloads.newsok.com/flash_video/theoklahoman/slideshows/080507-5yroldshot/
Is there any possibility of a wrongful death charge? I know it won't result in jail time, but at least it's something to make the next bunch of yahoos think before they pull a trigger.
One of the reasons why cops get away with this kind of thing is because too many mindless morons in the general public are nothing more cop brownnosers.
It's always "Support Your Local Police" and never "Get the Guns Out of the Hands of Idiots".
This is Austin's Mom. I just wanted to let you know the DA changed the date for the plea deal. It was scheduled for April 30th, but now it has been switched to March 28th....yes, this Friday at 4:00. Please help us spread the word. We hope this was not a way to keep the media and our supporters out of the courtroom. It will be at the Cleveland County Courthouse in Judge Lucas' courtroom. Thank you for helping us with this news we just received today (March 26th).
I personally know one of the "officers" involved and can only tell you what goes around comes around. I have seen him abusing his rights as a police officer on many occasions, and only pray justice for Austin and his family. The mindset of the officer was always as if he was "above all" and this just proves to everyone, he is only human. My heart goes out to the Haley family. My daughters attend the daycare at the church where Austin attended and as little as they understand about how he died, they insist on praying for his family daily.
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