Officer tried to make U-turn, relative says
OHP Trooper William Lloyd McClendon, 37, of Mounds, died when his 2006 Dodge Charger patrol car collided with a tractor-trailer rig driven by Hussein Haji-ege Osman, 25, whose address was listed as Kansas City, Mo.
Shirley McClendon of Drumright, a sister-in-law of the trooper's, said William McClendon was patrolling the Creek Turnpike on Sunday when he was dispatched to the Will Rogers Turnpike on a call concerning a car chase.
When the chase was called off, William McClendon, who was eastbound on Interstate 44, tried to turn around through an opening in the interstate's concrete barrier, and his car was struck by Osman's eastbound truck, Shirley McClendon said.
The Highway Patrol is compiling a report that will spell out the cause of the crash, which happened about six miles northeast of Claremore, OHP spokeswoman Kera Philippi said.
It could be a couple of days before details about the accident are released because law enforcement personnel are making arrangements to attend the trooper's funeral, Philippi said.
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Attempts to reach Osman's relatives this week have been unsuccessful.
A preliminary OHP report on the accident did not list the trucking company for which he was a driver.
Osman received his commercial driver's license April 26, 2004, in Missouri, said Maura Browning, a spokeswoman with the Missouri Department of Revenue.
He was among several hundred drivers who were being asked to retest for commercial driver's licenses as a result of a federal probe of a West Plains truck-driving school in southern Missouri, she said.
The superintendent of the West Plains driving school and the owner of a Kansas City truck-driver school are among 15 people who were indicted by a federal grand jury in Missouri last month, records show. They were charged with conspiring to help more than 70 Somali and Bosnian nationals get their commercial driver's licenses without passing the required written and driving proficiency tests, documents indicate.
Osman was not named in the indictment.
But when the indictments were announced, several hundred students were being contacted to retake the driving tests, said Don Ledford, a spokesman for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri.
Osman would have received a letter this month informing him of the retesting, Browning said.
A graduate of the Highway Patrol Academy in 1998, William McClendon had been married to his wife, Hope (Keizor) McClendon, for 14 years, according to his obituary. The trooper has two sons, Dakota, 17, and Maverick, 13, and a daughter, Kendra, 10.
Services for McClendon, an eight-year veteran of the OHP, will be held at 10 a.m. Thursday at the Marietta High School auditorium. Burial will follow about 4 p.m. at Green Hill Memorial Gardens in Sapulpa.
Souce: Tuslaworld.com, Oct. 4, 2006