Ardmore Police Department detectives spent hours Friday searching near a creek in a southeast neighborhood where two children found a human skull less than 24 hours earlier. But the hunt yielded no clues and left officers with lots of questions and no answers.
Capt. Kevin Woods, APD Criminal Investigation Division, said detectives used machetes to cut their way through the tangle of overgrown brush along the creek bank, near the intersection of 3rd Avenue and F Street SE. When the probe of the immediate area revealed no other human remains or evidence, Woods said he expanded the search.
“We even went upstream, but we didn’t find anything,” Woods said late Friday. “We are now waiting on what the (state) medical examiner’s office can tell us about the skull. And we would ask anyone who may have any kind of information to come forward.”
Earlier in the day, Cherokee Ballard, spokeswoman for the Oklahoma Medical Examiner, said preliminary examinations of the skull had produced some general identifiers.
“The skull is that of an adult ... possibly that of a male. From the appearance it looks like it had been buried under dirt. At this point there is no way of knowing how long it might have been buried,” she said.
Ballard said plans were to X-ray the skull to see if internal evidence or identifiers existed. Dr. Clyde Snow, a forensic bone expert had also been called in to aid state pathologists in their examinations.
According to Capt. Ed Harwood, APD, two small boys discovered the skull lying near the creek about 5 p.m. Thursday.
“The children were up on the road, looked down and saw the skull laying in the sand,” Harwood, said.
The boys retrieved the skull and took it home with them. When adults in the family discovered what the children had found, they notified police.
Marsha Miller 221-6529
marsha.miller@ardmoreite.com
