August 9, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon News Director –
A Weatherford man is in the Custer County Jail after allegedly threatening two police officers in Weatherford. Police had previously dealt with the man on a medical call.
23-year-old Maitham Mohammed Alshaikh, a former Southwestern Oklahoma State University student from Saudi Arabia, is being held on a $125-thousand dollar bond.
He was arraigned last week on a single felony charge of planning, conspiring and/or endeavoring to perform an act of violence.
According to a probable cause affidavit, Alshaikh allegedly threatened to shoot officer Joseph Cox and Assistant Police Chief Josh Van DeBurgh as they were trying to place him in restraints on a bed at Red Rock Crisis Unit in Clinton.
The court document says Alshaikh was yelling and resisting saying he was not going to let them kill him and that he was a dangerous person. He, later, stopped thrashing and looked them straight in the eye and calmly said, allegedly, that he was going to kill them.
Police were first called to the Weatherford Press on South Broadway after a man, later identified as Alshaikh, had come into the business and asked, “Do you like Arabs?” According to the affidavit, a witness told police that he had come in knowing that the witness worked there and was trying to intimidate him.
When police arrived, they found Alshaikh in a parked vehicle across the street, but he was unable to explain what was going on and would look around and in the sky as if he was seeing things. The court paper says the defendant admitted to having voices in his head and that he wanted to go speak with a doctor.
According to an article in the Clinton Daily News, a spokesperson with SWOSU said that as far as he knew, Alshaikh had never threatened anyone on campus, however, he was no longer a student there.
Alshaikh is due in court again on October 7 for a preliminary hearing conference with his attorney and a district judge.
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