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Author: Ziva Branstetter

Ziva maintains she was always too nosy to be anything other than a reporter. Though she's on a new adventure with The Frontier, she spent more than 25 years in the newspaper business, making politicians nervous and making sure readers got the truth. Contact: ziva@readfrontier.com or 918-520-0406.

Families struggle for help as mental illness takes its toll

Ziva Branstetter June 5, 2015

Matthew Stick

By the time an incoherent William Matthew Stick walked into All Soul’s Unitarian Church with his mother’s blood on his jeans, he had already waited a month for a mental health appointment.

During a psychotic break in October 2012, the then 20-year-old hid behind a refrigerator before lunging at his mother with a knife that he then thrust into her chest. Stick believed he was in the midst of the apocalypse and thought he was freeing Veronica Stick from demonic possession. Part of the delusion was that the knife was imbued with magic.

Families struggle for help as mental illness takes its toll

Ziva Branstetter June 5, 2015

Matthew Stick

By the time an incoherent William Matthew Stick walked into All Soul’s Unitarian Church with his mother’s blood on his jeans, he had already waited a month for a mental health appointment.

During a psychotic break in October 2012, the then 20-year-old hid behind a refrigerator before lunging at his mother with a knife that he then thrust into her chest. Stick believed he was in the midst of the apocalypse and thought he was freeing Veronica Stick from demonic possession. Part of the delusion was that the knife was imbued with magic.

Records show links between Okmulgee County, Glanz

Ziva Branstetter May 29, 2015

Rob Barris

In neighboring Okmulgee County, where the district attorney has been assigned to investigate alleged wrongdoing by the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office, records and interviews show a variety of connections between law enforcement and prosecutors over the years as well as potential conflicts.

An investigator for the Okmulgee County district attorney’s office is being sued in a case alleging excessive force against a man who was Tased during a 2013 arrest. The same investigator, Gary McCollum, was involved in a botched arrest in 2005 in which Tulsa County Assessor and Reserve Deputy Ken Yazel shot an Okmulgee County man in the buttocks.

County official: Tulsa should pay $3.8 million for jail use

Ziva Branstetter May 28, 2015

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Tulsa County Commissioner John Smaligo has renewed his push to charge the city of Tulsa a flat rate to hold its inmates in the Tulsa Jail, saying he believes the city never intended to sign a jail agreement with the county.
Smaligo’s proposal calls for the city to pay approximately $3.8 million annually, or about five times what the city has budgeted for that purpose.

Pickens: ‘They’re not even earthquakes’

Ziva Branstetter May 23, 2015

t_boone_pickens

OKLAHOMA CITY — In the face of volumes of contrary evidence, billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens said Friday that Oklahoma’s increase in earthquakes isn’t due to the energy industry, just to better monitoring.

“Wastewater wells and fracking have nothing to do with — they’re not even earthquakes,” he told KFOR news anchor Kevin Ogle, who interviewed the oilman from Holdenville before a crowd of 300 guests at the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma City.

Pickens’ statements came during a special limited seating luncheon, billed as the “T. Boone Pickens Birthday Bash” to celebrate Pickens’ 87th birthday.