Melissa and Wilbur Goodblanket and their son, Ahk-ta-na-hi, stand with a flag calling for justice in the killing of their other son Ma-hi-vist, outside their home in Clinton, Okla., Feb. 13, 2016. Garett Fisbeck for Al Jazeera America

After family members of several Native Americans with mental illness asked authorities for help, their relatives were later killed by law enforcement. The scenario has played out in Custer County and elsewhere in Western Oklahoma at least three times in recent years. This is the second in a three-part series exploring the case of Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket, an 18-year-old member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes, shot by sheriff's deputies after his father called 911. Parts 1 and 3 can be found here.

A small group of Native Americans hoisted signs into the air on a searing hot Oklahoma day as the president's motorcade rolled on in the distance.

“Justice for Mah-hi-vist Goodblanket,” read one. It featured a reproduction of a wood lithograph of a placid, bespectacled young Native American man in braids.

Barack Obama was in Oklahoma on July 16, 2015, to visit the federal penitentiary in El Reno, west of Oklahoma City. In a bid to highlight criminal justice reform, he planned to talk to inmates there. The motorcade turned in to a maze of red-roof buildings a half mile or more down the road, barely visible to the 100 or so people gathered by a police barrier and a grassy pasture to witness this rare spectacle — a Democratic president in Oklahoma, a state with politics as deep red as the state’s signature dirt.

Melissa and Wilbur Goodblanket, Mah-hi-vist’s parents, made the hourlong drive to El Reno from their home in rural Custer County because they wanted to bring attention to the shooting by local sheriff’s deputies of their 18-year-old son, Mah-hi-vist, the young man on the sign.

But Obama was too far away to see the family’s signs.

Frustration has become a familiar feeling in the years since Mah-hi-vist died.

Mah-hi-vist, whose name in English translates to Red Bird, had oppositional defiant disorder, a little-understood condition that he controlled with the help of therapy and medication. He was in the midst of a mental episode, thrashing around the home and breaking windows, when Wilbur called 911, worried his boy was going to hurt himself.

The family wanted help from medical personnel and law enforcement calming down Mah-hi-vist. That’s not what they got.

Custer County Sheriff Bruce Peoples told reporters that on Dec. 21, 2013, Mah-hi-vist threw knives at sheriff’s deputies and Oklahoma highway patrolmen in the home before two deputies fired seven shots, including one to the back of Mah-hi-vist’s head. Peoples declined to discuss specifics in a phone call with an Al Jazeera America reporter in early February.

One deputy had to have a finger amputated after shooting his hand during a confrontation with the 6-foot-8, 230-pound Mah-hi-vist, Peoples said in multiple media reports.

An autopsy report showed Mah-hi-vist had a blood alcohol level of 0.1.

According to Melissa, Noami Barron — Mah-hi-vist’s girlfriend, who was by his side moments before his death — told the family members that night that he had calmed down by the time lawmen arrived. He was crying and asking for his parents when the officers entered the home, not confrontational and throwing knives. Barron could not be reached for comment.

The Goodblankets want the investigation reopened and believe the scales of justice tip too heavily toward law enforcement in close-knit Custer County.