Public safety official says Nehemiah Fischer had gun, but details are scant as friend says Fischer was more likely to ‘pray for you’ than draw a weapon

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The wife of a man who was fatally shot by Oklahoma highway patrol officers as they responded to a stranded vehicle call has questioned the initial police account of the incident.

Nehemiah Fischer was an assistant pastor at Faith Bible Church in Tulsa. Police said the 35-year-old was shot dead by a highway patrol officer who responded with a partner to a call about a motorist stuck in a truck in rising waters in a rural road south of Tulsa after 9pm on Friday night.

Seven people have been reported dead in Oklahoma as a result of severe weather that has also badly hit Texas.

According to police, the officers told Fischer and his older brother, Brandon, to leave their stalled car and move to higher ground. Some kind of confrontation ensued and Nehemiah Fischer was killed. Brandon Fischer was not hurt. He was arrested on suspicion of assault.

“They would not have gone after the trooper … they would not do that on their own volition,” the dead man’s wife, Laura, told FOX23 local news.

Fischer had a gun, said captain Paul Timmons, an Oklahoma department of public safety spokesman. He said he was unable to provide more detail about whether Fischer was armed at the moment of the shooting and who exactly fired the shots.

“A handgun was found,” he told the Guardian. “I can’t verify whether it was being brandished but the deceased individual did have a handgun … the investigators are still trying to determine how many shots were fired. We know there was more than one but an exact number, I don’t have that information available yet.”

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Timmons said the officers involved would be placed on administrative leave, as is routine when police are involved in a serious incident, and more information, including their names, would be forthcoming later this week.

“It had been raining; that’s an area known to flood. I believe the road may already have been closed because of flood waters,” said Timmons. “The water was rising and running across the roadway rapidly and the troopers were concerned for these individuals’ safety.



“We’d already had numerous operations where we’d had to make water rescues around the state, so they were concerned for their safety, that they may be swept away by the rushing waters, so they were trying to convince them to come up to where they were so it would be safer.”

A friend of Fischer, Mike Haesloop, also questioned the police account of his death.

“He’s not the kind of guy that’s going to pull a gun on anybody,” said Haesloop, who was Fischer’s high school basketball coach and his father’s tax preparer. “He’s more one that’s going to pray for you.”

Haesloop said he had kept in touch with Fischer after he left school and had seen him most recently at a funeral within the past year. He was a well-liked member of the community, Haesloop told the Guardian.

“I’ve known Nehemiah for years. Never known him to drink, never known him to do anything [wrong]. I don’t get it. None of this is making any sense.

“When I got the news that he was shot and killed … You just shake your head and go: ‘What is going on, did God run out of good bodies up there?’ Because he’s the last one you’d think that would be in this kind of trouble.”

Laura and Nehemiah Fischer married last year. He ran a construction company, according to his LinkedIn page, and was a frequent guest speaker at the church on biblical topics. His middle name was Blessed.

“He was the nicest person I’ve ever met. He was very giving and he made me want to be a better person. He just inspired me; honestly, he completed my life,” Laura Fischer said.