Four former Bixby football players charged with second-degree rape by instrumentation have pleaded not guilty in the case that arose after a teammate alleged an assault during a team event.
The four defendants — Colten Cable, 17; Samuel Isaiah Lakin, 17; William Henry Thomas, 17; and Joe Wood, 16 — have been free on a $25,000 bond since they were booked last week into Tulsa Jail. They appeared a day before their scheduled arraignment to enter not guilty pleas Wednesday morning.
Longtime Superintendent Kyle Wood, Joe Wood’s father, was forced out of Bixby Public Schools in a resignation agreement with the local school board on Dec. 19, nearly three months after a 16-year-old student said he was raped with a pool cue for the second time by his high school football teammates at a team event hosted at the Woods’ residence.
An affidavit filed Thursday in Tulsa County District Court by an OSBI investigator states that the attack occurred after a Sept. 27 offensive line dinner there. Some of the players were gathered in Joe Wood’s upstairs bedroom to play video games.
Lakin reportedly barred the victim from leaving the room and then he and Cable, Thomas and Wood “dog piled” the victim, who was their teammate.
“The victim described being held face up by Lakin, while Joe Wood and Thomas forced the victim’s legs backward toward the victim’s chest, leaving the victim defenseless while the pool stick was forced into the victim’s anus,” the OSBI investigator’s affidavit states.
While the victim reported being “unable to see everything going on during the assault,” he heard one of his attackers call out, “The deeper it goes, the louder he screams.”
Another teammate reportedly video-recorded the attack on his cell phone.
In January, Oklahoma’s multicounty grand jury took up the case. After a host of witnesses with ties to the Bixby case were seen arriving to testify before the grand jury and then leaving two to three hours later, the grand jury reported that it needed more time to summon witnesses and for investigators to gather more evidence in the case.