By: Patti Weaver
(Stillwater, Okla.) — A Cushing man was charged Monday with aggravated assault and battery for allegedly fracturing the jaw of a bar owner on Highway 51 east of Stillwater at about 1 a.m. on Saturday.
The defendant, Rodney Warren Lunsford, 30, who is 6′ and weighs 248 pounds, was arrested three hours later on S. Union Road in rural Stillwater, an affidavit said. Lunsford was released on $2,500 bail with an order to appear in court on Tuesday for arraignment on the felony charge.
Payne County Sheriff’s Deputy Dalton Ross was dispatched at 12:59 a.m. on Saturday to the bar regarding an assault that had just occurred, according to his affidavit.
“When I arrived, I noticed several people in the parking lot of a local bar,” the deputy wrote in his affidavit.
The bar owner, who was bleeding from the mouth and difficult to understand, “told me he was certain his jaw was broken,” the deputy wrote in his affidavit.
While the deputy was waiting for an ambulance, a woman “informed me one of the individuals involved was named Rodney Lunsford. She had a picture of him on her phone from a social media site.
“She informed me the other male was named Dack, but did not know anything else about them. She advised there were two females with the males involved,” the deputy alleged in his affidavit.
When the deputy spoke to the bar owner at the emergency room, “He told me he had helped break up an altercation and was escorting a group of people to their truck that he had told to leave.
“He said that one of the females was becoming verbally aggressive and would not leave. He advised me that the female got in his face and was still not willing to leave the establishment,” the deputy alleged in his affidavit.
When the bar owner told the woman he was going to call 911, “the female grabbed his phone and threw it,” he told the deputy, according to his affidavit.
The bar owner “stated he had to keep the female away from him and used his hands to keep her away from his body. He said the man identified as Lunsford accused him of assaulting her,” before Lunsford punched the left side of his face, the affidavit alleged.
A physician said that the bar owner had suffered fractures in two places in his jaw, the affidavit said.
“The nurse advised me that the fractures were serious and that he would be transported to a surgeon as soon as they found one that could do the surgery,” the deputy wrote in his affidavit.
The bar owner was later sent to the OU Medical Center for surgery, the affidavit said.
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