A 26-year-old man wanted in a deadly shooting at an outdoor festival that left one person dead and seven others injured has turned himself in to police, authorities said.
Skyler Buckner was booked in Muskogee County jail around 4 p.m. Sunday, nearly 16 hours after the deadly gunfire at the Memorial weekend event in Taft, the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) said.
Police had issued a warrant for his arrest.
He faces yet-to-be-determined charges, Muskogee County District Attorney Larry Edwards told the Tulsa World.
Witnesses told authorities that an argument preceded the gunfire at the annual event packed full of at least 1,500 revelers.
“We heard a lot of shots and we thought it was firecrackers at first,” said Sylvia Wilson, an owner of Taft’s Boots Cafe, which was open at the time in the town that only has a population of a few hundred people.
“Then people start running and ducking. And we were yelling at everyone… ’Get down! Get down!” Wilson recalled.
The person shot dead was not immediately identified, other than being a 39-year-old black woman. Witnesses told Tulsa World that she was struck in the head.
The others injured — ranging in age from 9 to 56 — are all said to have non-life-threatening injuries, the agency said. The injured included the one juvenile, not two as previously announced, the force clarified.
Members of the Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office were in attendance and immediately began rendering aid, OSBI said.
“Bullets were literally flying everywhere,” Jasmayne Hill, who was working at a food truck during the event, told the Tulsa World.
Hill said she and Tiffany Walton, the owner of the food truck, dove to the truck’s floor to avoid the bullets.
“We’re thinking we’re safe and the bullets are like going through the bottom of the food truck,” Hill said. “They didn’t hit us, thank God.”
Neicy Bates and her husband were operating another food truck when the shots rang out. She told the Tulsa World that most people “were just going to the ground trying to get out of the way.”
“People were just screaming. Some were trying to run away. There were cars leaving, trying not to hit each other,” she said.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt said on Twitter that he was grateful for the OSBI’s “swift response to assist local police.”
