SHAWNEE, Okla. (AP) — The mother of a man accused of killing two Oklahoma sheriff’s deputies says her son has long battled a personality disorder and recently had been committed to a psychiatric center.
Patsie Holbert told The Oklahoman Wednesday her son battles a dark, alternate personality that drives him to violence.
Ezekiel Holbert, 26, is charged with first-degree murder in the Sunday shooting deaths of Seminole County Deputies Chase Whitebird, 23, and Marvin Williams, 43. The two deputies were serving an arrest warrant on Holbert at his mother’s house in Seminole when they were shot.
He also has been charged with shooting with intent to kill because he allegedly fired his gun at people who were near his house when the deputies were shot. One of those bystanders, neighbor Jennifer Bowen, was shot twice and remains hospitalized at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center. She is expected to be released Monday, her family said.
Patsie Holbert says the shootings may have been avoided if her son had gotten the mental health treatment he needed.
She told the newspaper she had him committed three times in the past two years at a psychiatric center in Norman but that each time he was released within a few days.
“They’d say there was nothing wrong with him,” Patsie Holbert said. “I’d argue with them, and they would throw in my face that I wasn’t a doctor.”
She said she often heard her son argue with himself in two different voices — a normal tone, and then a raspy, harsh version that spewed obscenities and threats.
Patsie Holbert said her son went to her house in Seminole the day of the shooting because he had no where else to go. He had stayed with various relatives, but each found his behavior too difficult to deal with and asked him to leave.
A neighbor called and warned her he was inside. She telephoned her house and had her last conversation with him.
She said the “good Ezekiel” pleaded with her for money, but she told him she didn’t have any.
“Then I heard the receiver drop to the ground, and the other voice called me a name and threatened to kill me,” she said.
“I know now that if I had walked through the door of my house that night, he would have.”
Patsie Holbert said she doesn’t know where her son obtained a gun. She said the only firearm in her home was a family heirloom rifle that doesn’t work. Her only working gun had been pawned months before to help feed her family.
The Oklahoma Indigent Defense System has been ordered to represent Holbert, and a telephone message left Thursday with the agency was not immediately returned.
Ezekiel Holbert has been accused in the past of threatening to kill family members.
In February, Seminole police arrested him on claims that he attempted to strangle his mother while she lay sleeping in bed.
In July, August and September 2007, Ezekiel Holbert’s sister, Tamara Rodriguez, and her husband, Mohommed Al Jebury, filed police reports alleging he threatened to shoot them and their children.
Ezekiel Holbert also has an arrest record for assault from Dallas County, Texas.
Local News
Related Photos
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Ezekiel Holbert, 26, center, is escorted from a courtroom by sheriff's deputies in Wewoka, Okla., Monday, July 27, 2009. Holbert was charged Monday with two counts of first-degree murder in the Sunday shooting deaths of two deputies in Seminole, Okla. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
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