Published on June 4, 2022 in the Tulsa World
TAFT — On Friday, the people of Taft reclaimed some of the sense of community that was stolen from their hometown less than a week ago.
Gathering Friday evening in the same spot where 39-year-old Sherika Bowler was killed and eight other people were wounded in a shooting early Sunday, during the town’s Memorial Day festival, residents and families of victims attempted to initiate healing through fellowship and rallying around Bowler’s family.
Her mother, Paulette Bowler, said at the gathering that she still at times is in disbelief that her daughter is gone.
“This last week has been the hardest of my life,” she said. “I thought losing my husband was hard, but losing my child was harder. It felt like a dream until I went to the funeral hall and realized it’s reality.
“I have to bury my daughter.”
No mother should ever have to watch their child die before them, Paulette Bowler said, and to see Sherika Bowler’s 5-year-old daughter beg for her mother to come back is something she never thought she’d have to hear.
“To have her baby cry out, ‘I want my mommy,’ is a hard thing to hear and keep my mental state strong to comfort her,” Paulette Bowler said. “Her and her mom were so close, and I know she misses her mom, because I miss her mom. But I will be there to love her the way her mom loved her.”
For Blanche Lang, Sherika Bowler’s older sister, it’s more than losing a sister. It’s losing her best friend.
“I think at any time she’s going to walk back through that door,” Lang said. “I’m preparing the funeral program, and for the last 15 years, it’s been me and her coordinating things. It’s hard for me to sit at my laptop and not call her to talk about it.”
Seeing the community of Taft come together to support her family has strengthened Lang, she said, because she knows that “if it wasn’t her (Sherika Bowler) and it was someone else, she would be right there organizing the event for their family,” Lang said.
“Seeing the community care enough about her to put this on for us means a lot.”
The Rev. Rodger Cutler, the Muskogee NAACP Chapter president who partially sponsored the gathering, said the event had a larger purpose for the community as well as supporting Bowler’s family.
It was to heal and bring back the joy and feeling of safety in the very spot where the violent act ripped those feelings away Sunday.
“We don’t want the residents here to become fearful to the point where they don’t come out to the (memorial) or fellowship together,” Cutler said. “(This event) gives a sense of healing. I hope this gathering can bring back a sense of community that has always been here.”
On the same day the Taft community reclaimed its town center, the first man accused in the shootings has been charged with murder and shooting with intent to kill, according to a prosecutor who said he expects more people also to be charged.
Skylar Buckner, 26, made his initial appearance in Muskogee County District Court on Friday afternoon, where District Attorney Larry Edwards said he was charged with one count of first-degree murder and eight counts of shooting with intent to kill.
Buckner’s case so far has not appeared in online court records, and a representative of the Muskogee County Court Clerk’s Office said it has not yet received any court filings.
Initial reports were that eight people had been shot, but the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation reported Thursday afternoon that a ninth person, a 19-year-old woman, also had been injured in the barrage of gunfire. She was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Tulsa, where she remained in stable condition, the OSBI said.
The OSBI also said Thursday that “agents have determined multiple suspects were involved and multiple weapons were used in the shooting.”
Edwards said Friday that his office hopes to charge additional people as the investigation continues.
Lang said even though there is some anger about her sister being killed, she has already forgiven the people who did it.
“I’m extending an olive branch,” Lang said. “I’m extending love, and I forgive them.”
She also has a plea to the other people who were involved in the shooting: Own up to it and turn yourselves in.
“It wasn’t just (Buckner),” Lang said. “Don’t be cowards, and man up and take responsibility for what you did.”