All USAO Press Releases

Ronnie Pernell Evans was sentenced to 30 months in prison for assaulting his intimate partner by strangling her.

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Timothy Kenneth Barber, age 44, of Hartshorne, Oklahoma, entered a guilty plea to an Indictment charging him with one count of Second-Degree Murder in Indian Country.

The Indictment alleged that on December 20, 2023, Barber killed the victim with malice aforethought.

Rodgerick Tsosie pleaded guilty in federal court to two charges stemming from a fatal shooting incident that occurred on the Navajo Nation in 2022.

Josiah Alan Smith was sentenced to 11 years and 4 months in federal prison for the 2021 murder of a man in Church Rock, New Mexico.

Tyran Begay pleaded guilty in federal court to second degree murder for his role in the brutal killing of a man on the Navajo Nation in 2020.

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Lawrence Fourkiller, age forty-eight, of Stilwell, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 420 months imprisonment, followed by a life-time term of supervised release, for one count of Aggravated Sexual Abuse of a Child in Indian Country.

Fourkiller pleaded guilty to the charge on April 11, 2024.  According to investigators, between August 2020 and May 2021, Fourkiller, while employed as a teacher at Stilwell Elementary School, sexually abused a student under the age of twelve.  During the

MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Joseph Gene Christie, age 18, of Stilwell, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 87 months in prison for one count of Sexual Abuse in Indian Country.  Christie will have to register and comply with the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act upon release.

On January 5, 2024, Christie was charged in a single-count Felony Information of Sexual Abuse in Indian Country.  On January 18, 2024, Christie pleaded guilty to the charge.  According to investigators, on March 6, 2023, Christie sexually