By Andrew Knittle
The Norman Transcript
NORMAN — A late-night text message from his girlfriend’s lover may have led to the shooting death of 31-year-old Jesse Shipley last Friday.
Shipley was shot by Norman police officers in the middle of the night after authorities were called to his apartment on a suicide call last week.
According to Shipley’s mother, Sue Steanson, her son became suicidal when he learned of an affair his girlfriend was having with another man. Steanson, who lives in another part of the state, said Shipley’s girlfriend was asleep in his apartment the afternoon of April 22 when her mobile phone “went off.”
“He checked the message … I’m not sure if it was sexual or what, but he called the guy back and the guy admitted the affair,” Steanson said Friday morning. “He confronted her (his girlfriend) and she admitted it, too.”
Steanson said the girlfriend left shortly thereafter and her son began making distressed phone calls to his father, who also lives outside the Norman area. His mother said Friday that Shipley had a history of depression and tried to commit suicide — by slitting his wrists with a broken bottle — when he was a teenager.
“He had come home, to finish the job, I guess,” said Steanson, who was living in Alabama at the time. “I just happened to be there … when I saw what he’d done I called to get him help.”
Shipley, a veteran who served in Afghanistan, had recently proposed to his girlfriend, but she had not said yes. Instead, the woman said she “had to work things out with her parents who did not like the idea,” Steanson wrote in an e-mail to The Transcript.
Steanson said she believes the woman had no intentions of marrying her son, something Shipley apparently couldn’t reconcile. She said after some drinking, her son called the girlfriend a final time before she called police to warn them Shipley was suicidal.
“If she wouldn’t have called the police, he may have just passed out and woke up with a headache,” Steanson said. “He was not a violent man … he was a very laid back person, actually.”
Steanson said she believes her son used the presence of police officers to end his life, even though he didn’t call them to his apartment.
“He had told his father earlier that he wouldn’t kill himself,” she said. “I think, when he saw the police in that state of mind, he just made the wrong decision.”
Her son’s death, however, doesn’t sit right with her.
Steanson said she is alarmed that her son was in need of help, but was instead shot after just a few short moments.
“I feel like the police didn’t think when they went to the apartment,” she said. “It really seems like it was a shoot first, ask questions later kind of thing … of course, I wasn’t there, but that’s what it sounds like to me.
“They were called there on a suicide call, you would think they would handle it better.”
Steanson said she or her ex-husband (Shipley’s father) could’ve driven to Norman in time to intercede, but both felt the situation was under control.
“I really didn’t see this coming,” she said. “I really hope other parents can learn from this.”
Shipley lived in the Edge at Norman, an apartment complex just south of Classen Boulevard and Lindsey Street, in Building 11. Most of the residents are students at the University of Oklahoma.
Many of the residents interviewed after the April 23 shooting said they were either not home or out of town at the time of the incident.
Steanson said her son had recently started training to become an insurance adjuster and that he had sold cars and motorcycles in addition to serving in the military.
Shipley had a memorial service Wednesday, his mother said, and he will later be cremated.
Andrew Knittle 366-3540 aknittle@normantranscript.com
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