Woman high on meth barricades herself in deputy’s patrol car and shoots officer with his own AR-15
An Oklahoma woman high on meth was seen on video being detained in a police officer’s car for crawling around and barking before she managed to slip out of her handcuffs, find the officer’s assault rifle, and started shooting out of the window.
Rachel Zion Clay, 36, was detained last Friday afternoon during a welfare check after homeowner Dale Moses called authorities because of Clay’s erratic behavior.
Responding officers say they only planned to detain Clay, not arrest her when they fitted her with double-lock handcuffs and placed her in the back of a police cruiser.
Shocking footage from inside the cruiser shows what happened next: Clay slipped her right wrist out of her handcuffs, reached the console toward the front of the car, and unlocked the gun compartment before retrieving an AR-15 assault rifle.
Rachel Zion Clay slipped out of her handcuffs before reaching into the front of the car and grabbing the officer’s assault rifle, which she then loaded
The officers and Moses are seen moments before the shooting occurred, calmly discussing the situation outside of the vehicle
Clay then points the gun out of the rear window, aiming at the responding officers and the homeowner
She blindly fires nine rounds from the gun, luckily only grazing Moses and an officer, who were treated for non-life-threatening injuries
Clay can then be seen loading a magazine into the gun, flipping the rifle’s flashlight on and pointing it out of the rear window and firing.
One officer and Moses were injured in the shooting as bullets grazed them, but both were treated for non-life-threatening injuries and released from hospital.
Clay barricaded herself inside the vehicle for over four hours before she surrendered, and officers found methamphetamines in her system.
She has now been charged with three felony counts of shooting with intent to kill for the shooting and is being held on a $1 million bond.
The shooting wrecked the police vehicle as Clay shot out the rear windows, leaving glass and debris littered everywhere
The officers duck behind the car and try to stop Clay, but she ends up barricading herself in the car for over four hours
Grady County Undersheriff Gary Boggess called the situation a ‘freak deal,’ and noted the handcuffs were correctly placed on Clay before she escaped them
Grady County Undersheriff Gary Boggess explained the situation, saying ‘while in the backseat patrol car, she was able to get her wrist free from the handcuffs and the handcuffs were put on properly.’
‘She was able to reach up on our consoles. There are several switches. one is a gun switch to unlock the gun lock, and she found it, unlocked the gun locker, and was able to receive retrieve a AR-15 rifle,’ Boggess said.
‘Then she was able to figure out how to put a round in it, put it on fire and she fired approximately 10 rounds at our deputies and a civilian,’ he continued.
Boggess said the police department will be making changes to their procedures in the wake of the incident, including altering how their police cruisers are set up.
‘One, I will say is our console. Where it actually said gun and she was able to see that, that’s gonna be replaced. We’re gonna put a switch someplace else in the vehicle to lock our gun,’ Boggess said.
He also emphasized how rare the situation was, admitting he had never seen something like it during his time with the department.
‘It’s a freak deal. It’s one of these probably, I’m not gonna say one in a million. But you know, it’s one of those deals that you know, once it happens then you go back and try to make sure it never happens again. And that’s what we’re looking at,’ Boggess said.
