By DYLAN GOFORTH
The Frontier
The security guard who shot and paralyzed a man earlier this year following an encounter at a south Tulsa apartment complex was charged Friday with possessing marijuana at the time of the shooting.
Ricky Stone, according to police documents, admitted to having a small amount of marijuana in a backpack inside his pickup the night he shot Monroe Bird through the neck. Bird, who was inside the car with a 15-year-old female friend when he was shot, crashed his car into a tree.
Monroe Bird III was shot by a south Tulsa apartment security guard in February.
Stone, 57, told police he approached the vehicle that Bird and the female were in to ask for their identification. Management at the Deerfield Estates apartments, 8812 S. Delaware Ave., had told him to watch for people who were having sex in vehicles in the parking lot, he said.
Both the girl and Bird have denied anything sexual occurred in the vehicle.
According to Stone’s statement, he knocked on the car’s window and said “I need to see some IDs.”
Bird exited the back seat of the car and locked himself in the front. Stone told police he tried to open the locked doors, then stood behind the vehicle, and said: “If you try to hit me, I will shoot.”
According to Stone, Bird backed up the car with such force that it lifted the security guard onto the trunk, causing him to shatter the back windshield with his hand holding the gun. He told police he fired one shot as soon as he got off the trunk, and two more as the car drove away.
Bird reportedly hit Stone with the vehicle, before being shot while driving away. Police reports stated that the back windshield of Bird’s vehicle was shattered by Stone’s hand after he had been flung on the trunk of the vehicle.
Stone was not charged with the shooting, after the District Attorney’s Office ruled it justified earlier this year. Bird was not charged with striking Stone with his vehicle.
Bird has been hospitalized since the shooting, and his family has spent months preparing their home in Boley to house their six-foot, eight-inch son. The family has raised more than $30,000 on their gofundme page.
dylan@readfrontier.com
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