TAFT — As residents and local organizations continue to recover from a shootout at a Memorial Day weekend festival in which one person was killed and several others were injured in the crossfire, many community members say they feel like the government and those outside Muskogee County have forgotten about them.
“We’ve been failed,” Tiffany Walton said in the weeks after the shooting that took 39-year-old Sherika Bowler’s life and injured eight other people.
Walton, a Taft resident and food truck vendor whose brand new truck and business suffered thousands in of dollars worth of damage from the gunfire, said the pain caused by the feeling of being left behind after such a tragedy is worse than rubbing salt on a wound.
“Alcohol,” Walton said. “Alcohol and bleach are being poured on an open wound after it was just opened.”
Sylvia Hollis Lang, the mother of the youngest victim in the shooting, thanked local groups for their support but also said outside of their area, no one has offered support or even seems to care anymore.
“The outside, no, they don’t care,” Hollis Lang said. “I don’t want (my daughter) being forgotten about.”
‘I just want to be a normal kid’
Nine-year-old Za’Kyiah Hollis Triggs was grabbing a fish dinner with her uncle near Walton’s food truck when their hometown’s event turned into a waking nightmare.
As shooting erupted around her, the crowd of nearly 1,500 became a flood of people running to escape the bullets. Za’Kyiah’s mother, Hollis Lang, was on the other side of the festival when the shooting started.
“When the gunshots started going, all the kids started running this way,” she said. “I saw some of my kids run towards home, but I didn’t see (Za’Kyiah). I just thought, ‘Where’s my baby?’”
She ran against the current through the crowd toward where the shooting happened to search for her missing daughter.
As she was running toward the food trucks, Hollis Lang saw people who had been shot lying on the ground and later discovered that one of them was her first cousin, Sherika Bowler, who was fatally injured.
She finally found Za’Kyiah in a field farther away from the festival; a nurse was helping her.
Za’Kyiah had been shot in the leg.
“They had her leg tied up and was applying pressure to it,” Hollis Lang said. “She told me, ‘Momma, I’m OK. Stop crying. I’m OK.’ But when I saw all the blood, I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’”
Even 2½ weeks after the shooting, Za’Kyiah said she is still feeling the effects of such a traumatic event.
Sitting in the gazebo in the town square, she looked over to the street where the shooting occurred and thought about how it makes her feel now.
The gunshot wound is still in danger of being infected, so she can’t take part in her normal summer activities, but more than that, she’s would be afraid to do so even if she could.
“I just want to be a normal kid and swim and play outside, but I’m scared,” Za’Kyiah said. “I can’t sleep. I have nightmares.”
A small town with big trauma
Hollis Lang said it breaks her heart to know Za’Kyiah will have a long road of recovery, not just for her physical gunshot wound but also for her mental scars.
To help with that, though, she said, Za’Kyiah will be going through therapy at Green Country Behavioral Health Services in Muskogee using a laptop computer Taft’s mayor brought to them.
“That shows me they care,” Hollis Lang said.
GCBHS had professional mental health staff in Taft the week after the shooting and took part in a recent Muskogee County mental health forum on trauma, collaborating with the Muskogee Chapter of the NAACP.
Hollis Lang’s husband’s co-workers at Eddie Warrior Correctional Facility in Taft also showed that they cared.
“They were a blessing to her,” she said. “They sent gifts, cards, posters to make her feel good.”
Since the shooting happened, though, Hollis Lang said no one from any state agency has reached out to help them.
“It’s just a small town you can look past,” she said.
On they day of the shooting, Gov. Kevin Stitt tweeted that he had been “informed” of the shooting and was grateful for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation’s “swift response to assist local police and (was) confident in Oklahoma law enforcement’s ability to bring justice to whoever is responsible for this deadly incident.”
There did not appear to be any kind of public message from Stitt about the victims of the shooting.
Kate Vesper, a spokeswoman for Stitt, said in a June 17 email to the Tulsa World: “The governor’s prayers for healing continue to be with the Taft community in the wake of the violent incident. We are proud of our state agencies for stepping up to offer support and resources during this difficult time.”
Vesper identified the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services as being mobilized to assist Taft. Green Country Behavioral Health Services is part of the department's treatment network and responded in Taft as a designated community provider, a spokesman for the department said.
‘Left to pick up the pieces’
The Muskogee NAACP chapter president, the Rev. Rodger Cutler, said his organization, which has participated in several support events, is “appalled at the lack of response to the people of Taft.”
Cutler said Stitt could have gone to the town or sent a representative to let the residents know he cared about them, and he said Stitt’s single tweet was “not enough.” He commented on the optics of the situation in light of Taft’s demographics.
“Because it was a small town of minorities, the attention was not given. Certainly as the governor of all of Oklahoma, one citizen ought to matter to our governor,” Cutler said.
The week after the shooting, the NAACP donated 30 fundraised McDonald’s gift cards to children, including Za’Kyiah, in Taft.
“Even the smallest gesture in times like these helps people to know you care,” Cutler said. “What a smile that put on their faces.”
Walton, who also assisted in raising money for the gift cards and put together many of the community events since the shooting, said she was angry about the state’s lack of response.
A nurse and one of the first people to assist shooting victims at the scene, Walton said in the days after the shooting that she expected to see state agencies or volunteer groups being mobilized to help them, but there were none.
“The ones left to pick up the pieces are the victims,” Walton said. “We have seen no help from the governor, no Red Cross, no National Guard.”
Walton said she and other Taft residents had to work extra hard to clean up the town after the shooting.
“I would ask the governor to make a trip to Taft,” Cutler said. “Meet with the people … however his schedule permits so the town of Taft knows the Governor’s Office cares about the people of Taft. That’s what they need right now. Our shared love.”