Oklahoma woman spends confused weekend in county

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

An Oklahoma woman apparently suffering a mental health crisis Saturday caused tense moments for emergency workers after she ran out of gasoline near Burns, pulled her Jeep Wrangler into the entrance of an abandoned farmstead, and vanished.

The drama began when she called dispatchers early in the afternoon to say she had car trouble.

Deputies located Terri Tucker, 60, Glenpool, Oklahoma, not far from her car near US-77 and 40th Rd. After making sure she was not injured, they offered to bring her gasoline. She declined. They summoned a tow truck and resumed patrolling.

When the tow truck arrived, Tucker again refused help.

“She was having nothing of that,” Undersheriff Larry Starkey said.

Then, at 6:54 p.m., she called dispatchers and told them she was lost in the woods and didn’t know where she was.

Hillsboro firefighters with a drone and Marion ambulance were sent to her last known location, but the firefighters misunderstood and initially headed to 340th Rd. and US-56/77 before being redirected.

Dispatchers also asked for a Highway Patrol helicopter and for the Butler County sheriff’s department to bring a bloodhound to track her, Starkey said.

She eventually was found about 75 yards from her car, sitting in tall weeds. The location did have trees around it, Starkey said.

The bloodhound found her minutes after it arrived, he said.

Marion ambulance evaluated her, but she refused to go to a hospital.

Deputies agreed to take her to a Marion motel for the night and contacted her family near Ponca City, Oklahoma. They agreed to come get her.

When her parents arrived Sunday morning, a deputy took her father to get gasoline.

After her father put gas in the Jeep, it started right up.

Her family escorted Tucker home.

Later Sunday, dispatchers pinged her phone to check on her location. It returned a location in the 700 block of S. Roosevelt St. in Marion.

Marion interim police chief Zach Hudlin said he went to check that block, but neither Tucker’s Jeep nor Tucker was there.