‘Right place at the right time,’ says Oklahoma officer who stopped Leavenworth suspect
A semi-truck driver helped alert Oklahoma authorities to the location of a father who allegedly abducted his two daughters after their brothers were found dead Saturday in Leavenworth.
Maj. James Sherley, of the Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Department, said Monday the boys’ deaths are considered a double homicide and that Donny Jackson is a suspect in the killings. No charges have been filed as of Tuesday morning.
Jonathan Burrow, a motor carrier officer with the Oklahoma Corporation Commission, pulled Jackson over on Saturday. In an interview with KFOR-TV in Oklahoma, he said he initiated a traffic stop after Jackson’s Honda sped past him.
“It was just the right place at the right time to be sitting there,” Burrow said.
Burrow pulled Jackson over near Erick, Oklahoma on Saturday, about 500 miles southwest of Leavenworth. He called for backup, and the officers took the girls and arrested Jackson.
Jackson appeared shocked he was being pulled over and that “the events were happening the way they were,” Burrow told the television station. Burrow said he was just happy the girls were safe.
Amber Alerts had been issued in multiple states Saturday after family members found the boys — 14-year-old Logan Jackson and 11-year-old Austin Jackson — dead at Jackson’s home in the 14900 block of Hillside Road in rural Leavenworth. Their younger sisters, 7-year-old Nora Jackson and 3-year-old Aven Jackson, were missing, and investigators believed Jackson abducted them.
Authorities expanded the search after they learned the Kansas Highway Patrol made an unrelated car stop on Jackson’s vehicle shortly after 12:30 p.m. on Highway 169 near the Oklahoma border. That was before the Leavenworth County Sheriff’s Office was called to the home where the boys’ bodies were discovered.
Someone called 911 just before 7 p.m. to report seeing a black Honda described in the Amber Alert near Sayre, heading west on Interstate 40, according to the Beckham County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma.
After a few “tense minutes,” as officers tried to get into place to “intercept” the Honda, a second person — the truck driver — called 911 to say the Honda was now at the 6-mile marker in the western part of the county.
“Our dispatcher working the call was determined that the vehicle wasn’t going to slip away,” Sheriff Derek Manning said in a Facebook post. “Along with keeping our deputies and troopers updated on the information, she called officers at the Port of Entry office, which is located just inside the state line, knowing they would be in a good position.”
Law enforcement in Wheeler County, Texas, were also notified in case Jackson continued past the state border.
Jackson was arrested without incident and was being held on a complaint of child abduction, according to Bechkam County officials.
“My dispatcher said that the way this worked out was definitely a ‘God thing’ as far as she was concerned,” Manning said. “It was also an outstanding example of people working together to make a good thing happen.”
In the days after the boys’ bodies were found, people left a toy giraffe and a bouquet of red, yellow and purple flowers near the mailbox of the Leavenworth home. Snow has since covered personal items, including bicycles and a toy kitchen set, in the lawn in front of the house, which sits in a rural area along a dirt road.
No one answered the door at the home Monday.
This story was originally published October 27, 2020 at 12:02 PM with the headline "‘Right place at the right time,’ says Oklahoma officer who stopped Leavenworth suspect."
