Last Updated on July 4, 2023, 2:48 PM | Published: July 4, 2023
OKLAHOMA CITY — A man now thought to have been experiencing a mental health emergency walked into the main building of the Riversport water park Sunday with some sort of device strapped to his chest.
Police were called as some guests ran out of the facility believing that the device strapped to his chest could be a bomb.
When officers with the Oklahoma City Police Department (OKCPD) arrived around 4:15 p.m. they found James Patrick Keenan, 34, “behind the employee counter” of the main building “holding a metal object up to his neck, which appeared to be a gun, and a cell phone in the other hand,” read the official report filed by one of the responding officers.
Officers then cleared remaining guests out of the building.
Crisis intervention officers spent about an hour talking Keenan into not pointing the gun at his neck and head, putting it down and moving away from it.
Officers learned later that when he entered the facility, he was on the phone with the VA Crisis Hotline (988).
Once the officers took Keenan into custody they found that the weapon he had been pointing at his head and neck through the ordeal was an actual single-shot gun — a Lifecard 22WMR — designed to fold up and carry in one’s pocket. However, they found that it was not loaded with lethal ammunition but plastic bullets used for training.
When Keenan was booked into the Oklahoma County Detention Center (OCDC,) he was booked as James Patrick Rude because that was the name the system still had for him according to Mark Opgrande, spokesperson for the OCDC. Court records show that Rude changed his last name to Keenan in 2012.
He was booked on complaints of:
- POSSESS, USE, MANUFACTURE OR THREATEN TO USE INCENDIARY DEVICE OR EXPLOSIVES
- THREATEN TO PERFORM ACT OF VIOLENCE
No tests of the device have been reported conclusively as of publication.
Note: As of publication, the information provided by the OKCPD has not yet been tested in court. Under the law, all persons are considered innocent until proven guilty before a jury of their peers or a plea of guilt.
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
