Man on the Run
Political activist Toby Pedford came on the scene in 2009 during the Tea Party emergence. Pedford was a frequent speaker at the Oklahoma City Tea Party events and the John Birch Society events, and has lately attached himself to the Dan Fisher gubernatorial campaign. Pedford was the rare black Tea Party activist, but he quickly let it be known that he wasn't the religious type, joking at one event that he was the token pagan speaker, and once the picture of Pedford and the two twin sister p*rn stars surfaced, well, we all realized that Pedford was not gonna run for office anytime soon.
Pedford earned a reputation for playing loose with the truth as well, having an appreciation for the ladies, and didn't play well with others, but it was a shock to many to find out this week that Toby Pedford had become a man on the run from law enforcement after disappearing from the scene of an accident on the Broadway Extension/235 in the construction zone.
Sources claim that Pedford was at one of his local watering holes on the afternoon of Thursday the 8th of February, they also claimed Pedford was a long time user of prescription pain medication due to back pain and a fan of fine scotch, especially at Juniors, the NW Expressway area restaurant that was his favorite afternoon hangout. Now as an insurance agent, no one needed to warn Pedford of the danger of mixing booze and pills, but after midnight on Thursday night Pedford was driving South on the North bound lanes of 235 right where they are replacing all the bridges south of the I-44 junction. Motorists were claiming to have seen and reported Pedford driving the wrong way as much as ten minutes before the fatal crash. Slamming head on into a car driven by an older woman resulted in both cars being totaled out.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol and local media articles state that both drivers were pinned in the cars up to 20 to 30 minutes and that both drivers were transported to a local hospital with the woman driver in critical condition. Pedford hobbles out with a broken ankle according to sources, leaving the OHP wondering where he had wandered off to. The sources claim that Pedford hadn't bothered to speak with OHP and OHP considered him a wanted man at that point according to news reports.
OHP puts out a media alert asking citizens to report Pedford's whereabouts as well as any information on Pedford's activities on the afternoon of February 8th up and past the time of the car crash. We learned late Saturday night that Pedford was hiding out at his home nursing the broken ankle, no doubt allowing his blood alcohol and drug levels to drop down a bit, and was planning on turning himself in on Monday. If OHP knew were Pedford was they weren't letting on Friday afternoon and were playing the situation like Pedford was a fugitive.
What an unfortunate event, right? A local guy trying to be a good citizen activist makes a little mistake that all of us might find ourselves doing one of these days, right?
Uh, no. It turns out that Toby Pedford was hiding a troubling past and appears to have had TWO active arrest warrants out for his arrest. The first was in 2012 in Comanche County, driving with a suspended license. The second was four years later for the exact same offense, driving while under suspension. In both cases Pedford was arrested or ticketed, charged, and refused to show up for court, leading to arrest warrants that have been on the books nearly six years and two years respectively.
And the first 2012 suspended license arrest has an open warrant just like this 2016 case.
Now generally there are only a few things that will get your license suspended, drunk driving or impaired driving (drugs), non payment of child support or court fines, too many tickets in a short time. , hit and run, failure to carry insurance, , or refusing to pay for damages caused in an accident. The most likely of course is past charges of impaired driving or DUI or Actual Physical Control of a vehicle such as Preston Doerflinger faced or the little drunk Senator from Woodward, what's his name.
No traffic tickets other than the suspended driving arrests showed up in the online OSCN.net records but a few years back a law was passed that required new DUI cases be entered into the state network but given the original arrest was back in 2012 if there was a DUI it was likely municipal and unrecorded in state records. Drunks could pile up arrest after arrest and a trooper might not know when he pulled the guy over.
