Pleasant Yargee - Deputy Sheriff

Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office       October 26, 1909

On Monday, October 18, 1909, Deputy Sheriff Pleasant “Pleas” Yargee, 24, while participating in a roping contest, intervened with a gambler who was “robbing” a young drunken boy of his money. Harsh words were exchanged, and guns were drawn. The gambler, Texas Graves, shot first, striking Deputy Sheriff Pleasant Yargee in his right arm, shattering it from the wrist to the elbow. Deputy Sheriff Yargee returned fire striking Graves in the hip. Texas Graves fired again, shooting two fingers off Deputy Sheriff Yargee’s left hand. The shooting stopped. Deputy Sheriff Yargee was taken to his home in Red Fork; the gambler was arrested and taken to jail.

A few days later, Deputy Sheriff Yargee was taken to the West Side Hospital in Tulsa for blood poisoning.  His arm was amputated at the shoulder, but the surgery did not save his life. Deputy Sheriff Pleasant Yargee died on October 26th.

Deputy Sheriff Pleasant Yargee was survived by his wife of one year, Cassie and buried in Clinton Oaks Cemetery, Red Fork, Tulsa County, Oklahoma.  

Due to conflicting witness statements, no one was ever held accountable for Deputy Sheriff Pleasant Yargee’s death.  

Deputy Pleasant Yargee was the first Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff to be killed in the line of duty.

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Francis Lewis “Frank” Yeager - Deputy Sheriff

Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Office        November 16, 1911

About 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, November 16, 1911, Deputy Sheriff Frank Yeager, 51, and A.F. Marks went to serve a writ issued by a Justice of the Peace in Harrah for a herd of cattle that had been seized by a black constable, Sam D. Jones. Constable Sam Jones had previously been given a writ to seize the herd of cattle by a black Justice of the Peace in Dewey Township. A dispute over legal authority broke out between the two lawmen.

Constable Sam Jones reached for his Winchester rifle in a wagon and Deputy Sheriff Yeager drew his gun on Constable Jones.  A friend of Constable Jones’, William Bonner, came out of the house, covering Deputy Sheriffs Yeager and Marks with a shotgun. As Deputy Sheriff Yeager turned around to look at William Bonner, Constable Sam Jones shot Deputy Yeager in the back. The bullet went entirely through Deputy Sheriff Francis Yeager’s body. Deputy Sheriff Yeager fired one shot before he fell dead but missed hitting Constable Sam Jones. A. F. Marks was forced to leave the premises.  Constable Sam Jones then walked four miles to Luther and surrendered himself.

Murder charges were filed against Constable Sam Jones, but he was acquitted in a trial in Oklahoma City the following January. The jury found that Deputy Sheriff Francis Yeager did not have legal authority in the matter.

Deputy Sheriff Frank Yeager was survived by his pregnant wife Sally and their seven children and is buried in Memory Lane Cemetery, Harrah, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma.

Deputy Sheriff Frank Yeager was born Francis Lewis Yager on April 7, 1860, in Missouri and the spelling of his last name was later changed.

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Updated August 7, 2023

Alan Frederick Yerton - Officer

Tulsa Police Department         December 25, 1959

Shortly after 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, Christmas Eve of 1959, Officer Yerton, 24, was in a patrol car in route to a hospital on an emergency call.  Another patrol car was traveling alongside Officer Yerton’s when a vehicle, driven by Lance Vandeventer, turned in front of the officers at the intersection of 11th and Delaware Avenue. One of the patrol cars swerved to miss the civilian vehicle, jumped the curb, glanced off a building and hit the other patrol car. Although Officer Yerton’s injuries were initially diagnosed as minor fractures and lacerations, he died from his injuries 25 hours later Christmas morning.

Lance Vandeventer ran from the scene but was later arrested and felony charges filed for leaving the scene of an injury accident and manslaughter. Two passengers in his car were arrested at the accident scene for Public Drunkenness.

Officer Yerton was survived by his wife Peggy and is buried in the Memorial Park Cemetery, Tulsa, Tulsa County, Oklahoma.

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Edward Yoakum - Officer

Tulsa Police Department       October 27, 1920

Edward Yoakum was born January 11, 1897, in Fannin County, Texas, the third child of Mortimer Columbus and Laura Mae (Irwin) Yoakum.

Early Wednesday morning of October 27, 1920, at 3 a.m. K.W. Cottrel received a phone call at his home from a neighbor calling to tell him there was a burglar in Mr. Cottrel’s house. Mr. Cottrel had already been awakened by the burglar, taken his pistol from under his pillow and began searching the dark house.

The Tulsa Police Department was notified of the burglary. Four Tulsa officers, including Officer Edward Yoakum, quickly arrived and surrounded the residence. Officer Yoakum, 23, a veteran of World War I, went to the rear of the house and soon arrested the burglar Tom Smith coming out of the back door carrying a gun in one hand and his shoes in the other.

K. W. Cottrel was still searching his house and as he approached his back door, he saw a man’s shadow in the doorway and fired at the shadow once then heard a man scream. Officer Edward Yoakum, hit in the chest, ran around the house, and collapsed in the front yard. Officer Yoakum was rushed to the hospital and died an hour and a half later. No charges were ever filed against Mr. Cottrel who was absolved by Officer Yoakum just before he died saying, “I forgive the man that shot me.”

Officer Edward Yoakum’s badge number was 13, the same badge number that Officer Glenn Allison had been wearing when he was killed in the line of duty two years earlier. Edward Yoakum had specifically requested that badge number the previous spring.

Officer Edward Yoakum was survived by his parents and five brothers and sisters and is buried in Vineyard Grove Cemetery, Fannin County, Texas.

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Charles Cash York - Detective

Oklahoma City Police Department       February 8, 1933

Detective Charles York, 50, had joined the Oklahoma City Police Department in 1919. On a bitterly cold Wednesday morning, February 8, 1933, Detective Charles York, and Detective Martin Binion, went to a rooming house at Grand and Geary Avenue to arrest a black man named Otis Tillman, wanted for bogus checks and mortgaging property that did not belong to him.  Otis Tillman, a three-time inmate of the Granite State Reformatory, had been arrested by Detective York in the past without incident and therefore the two officers did not anticipate any trouble this time.

Upon entering Otis Tillman’s two-room apartment, the two detectives heard a noise in a darkened back room. Finding Otis Tillman in the back room, Detective York told him to come along with them and both officers turned to leave.  As Detective Charles York was exiting the room after Detective Martin Binion, Otis Tillman drew a gun and shot Detective York three times. Detective Charles York fell dead, his revolver still in its holster as Detective Martin Binion turned back through the doorway and shot Otis Tillman in the forehead killing him.

Detective Charles York was survived by his wife Ada and is buried in Rose Hill Cemetery, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County, Oklahoma.

Detective Martin Binion went on to serve as a law enforcement officer for forty years serving as Oklahoma City Chief of Police three times, Oklahoma County Sheriff twice, Deputy U.S. Marshal and as a Federal Prohibition Agent. Otis Tillman was the only person Martin Binion ever shot and killed in those forty years of service.

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Billy Gene Young - State Trooper

Oklahoma Highway Patrol       May 26, 1978

On Friday morning, May 26, 1978, the nation-wide search for two escaped convicts, Claude Eugene Dennis, 35, and Michael Charles Lancaster, 25, centered around Lake Texhoma. The pair had escaped from the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester thirty-four days earlier. Since then the pair had engaged in a crime spree that covered 1,000 miles from Oklahoma to Alabama and included seven murders. They also had wounded a police officer in Alabama. Highway Patrol (OHP) Troopers were sent from all over Oklahoma to assist in the search.

That morning a farmer in Kenefic reported that two heavily armed men tied him up and stole his pickup truck. The description of the pickup was broadcast to all units in the area.

OHP Troopers Houston F. “Pappy” Summers, 62, and Billy Gene Young, 50, located the pickup on Highway 48 eight miles north of Durant and pursued it north to near Kenefic. The pickup finally pulled over to the side of the road. As the troopers’ patrol unit came to a stop behind the pickup the two convicts opened fire on them. Both Trooper Summers and Young were killed.

 The convicts then traveled east on Highway 22 into Caddo with their location being broadcast by an OHP airplane that was following them overhead. Once in Caddo the pickup pulled into a driveway on Court Street, the two convicts jumped out and hid behind some nearby shrubbery. Almost immediately, an unmarked OHP unit pulled up in front of the driveway driven by Lt. Hoyt Hughes with his partner, Lt. Pat Grimes, 36. The convicts opened fire on the troopers immediately, killing Trooper Grimes. Trooper Hughes was also wounded but after emptying his pistol retrieved a semi-automatic rifle from his dead partners lap and emptied it at the convicts, killing Lancaster. Other troopers soon arrived and in the continuing shootout killed Dennis.  

Billy G Young had been a Trooper twenty-five years when he was killed.

Trooper Young was survived by his wife Letha, three adult sons Byron “Lee”, Jerry Lynn and Robert Leo and one grandchild.

Billy Young is buried in Elmwood Cemetery, Woodward, Woodward County, Oklahoma.

May 26, 1978, “Black Friday” was the worst day in the forty-year history of the OHP, however less than two months later three more troopers would die in the line of duty.

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Eugene Lee Young - Probation and Parole Officer

Oklahoma Department of Corrections        July 28, 1989

Eugene Young, 60, was working at the Oklahoma City office of the State Probation and Parole Department.

On the afternoon of Friday, July 28, 1989, parolee Huey Don Turner, 23, was being arrested during his visit to the office preparatory to having his parole revoked. Huey Turner resisted violently, and Eugene Young was one of five-corrections officers called to subdue him. A short time later, Officer Eugene Young suffered a heart attack and died at Presbyterian Hospital in Oklahoma City.  

Probation and Parole Officer Eugene Young was the only Oklahoma law enforcement officer to die in the line of duty in Oklahoma in1989.

Eugene Young was survived by his wife Marlene, two sons, Douglas, and Kevin and two daughters, Pamela and Angela and is buried in Kingfisher Cemetery, Kingfisher, Kingfisher County, Oklahoma.

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Thomas Young - Posse, Deputy U.S. Marshal

U. S. Marshal Service     August 25, 1882

On Saturday, August 12, 1882, Deputy Marshal James G. Farr, and his posse, Thomas Young, arrested a man named Robert Love aka Robert Jones on a murder warrant for the murder of a Dr. Bailey at Lake West in the Choctaw Nation, Indian Territory. As Posse Thomas Young was walking Robert Love to his horse, John S. Lennox and G. G. Randell, Robert Love’s brothers-in-law attacked Posse Thomas Young, shooting him eight times, freed Robert Love and escaped.  Posse Thomas Young was treated for his wounds and for a while it appeared, he might survive but he died from his wounds on Friday, August 25th.

The burial site of Posse Thomas Young is unknown.

Robert Love committed suicide several days after Posse Thomas Young died.

G. G. Randell was arrested later and tried but the trial ended in a hung jury and apparently, he was never retried.

John S. Lennox would go on to kill Deputy U. S. Marshal Dave Layman on April 10, 1883. John Lennox was finally arrested almost twelve years later in September of 1894 in Texas, tried only for the murder of Deputy Marshal Dave Layman for which he was found not guilty.

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Kristopher David Youngberg - Federal Agent

U.S. Department of Energy

National Nuclear Security Administration

Office of Secure Transportation       October 5, 2018

On Friday, October 5, 2018, Federal Agent Youngberg, 41, and four other agents were returning to Amarillo, Texas, in a Department of Energy van after attending training at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas. Traveling west bound on I-40 near Okemah, Oklahoma the van struck the back of a dump truck that was attempting to make a U-turn in the center median of the Interstate. Agent Youngberg suffered fatal injuries and died at the scene while three of the other agents were critically injured.

Agent Youngberg was a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and had served with the National Nuclear Security Administration - Office of Secure Transportation for eight years.

Kristopher Youngberg was survived by his wife Misty, two children, his father, and sister. Kristopher Youngberg’s earthly remains were cremated.

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Updated August 7, 2023