BIXBY, Okla. -- The Rogers County District Attorneys Office released new documents regarding a sexual assault investigation involving Bixby High School football players.
The new documents include information investigators obtained from a search warrant served for the four players’ cell phones. The documents say the four students admitted to involvement in the reported sexual assault, which occurred last September at the home of former Bixby School Superintendent Kyle Wood.
The victim claims a similar incident happened at a team function at the same location one year earlier.
With the four phones obtained from the search warrant, investigators are privy to text messages, calls, photos and videos from the players involved.
A fifth student admitted to videoing the assault and sharing it with other students. Wayne Stinnett, the investigator, claims that student told his mother a parent of another player involved offered to buy his phone which had the video of the incident.
The newly released documents also combat the Bixby school board's claims that there were errors in the timeline of when school administrators learned about the assault allegation and reported it.
Stinnett says Athletic Director Jay Bittle took a written statement from the victim on Oct. 26, 2017, nearly one month after the incident. He said Bittle, Superintendent Wood and Principal Terry Adams gave differing accounts of how they first learned of the allegations.
The investigator says law enforcement was not notified until October 31, 2017 and the Department of Human Services was not contacted until November 10, which is required under state law.
The documents go on to say, “It is unclear when school officials reported this sexual assault of a child to the authorities, although it was certainly delayed for days. It certainly appears that any reporting of the incident was significant and has caused difficulty in the investigation, especially including the inability to preserve evidence. It also appears that there may have been some initial effort by one or others to not report the incident at all.”
The Tulsa County District Attorneys Office handed the investigation over to the Rogers County Office after recusing itself because of the members is related to someone involved in the case.
Superintendent Kyle Wood resigned in December.
A Bixby parentspoke out at a school board meeting.
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