On the morning of September 19, 1979, airport police officer Garland L. Garrison, 50, was shot and killed at the edge of Will Rogers World Airport in Oklahoma City during an encounter with a traveler, 31-year-old Rita Silk Nauni, and her ten-year-old son. Garrison and his partner, Officer Teresa Wells, had been sent to check on the pair after motorists reported clothing scattered along South Meridian Avenue. Accounts agree that a struggle broke out as officers tried to place the mother and child into the patrol vehicle; Wells fell into a shallow ravine, her service revolver came loose, and Nauni seized the gun.

Witnesses and testimony differ on small points, but all describe Nauni firing the weapon, striking Garrison in the chest and Wells in the leg. Nauni fled in the stolen airport cruiser with her son but was captured after a brief pursuit and collision with other patrol cars. Garrison was taken to South Community Hospital and died of his wound that morning.

Court proceedings focused heavily on Nauni’s mental state and history; the jury convicted her of first-degree manslaughter in Garrison’s death and of shooting with intent to kill for Wells’s injury. Does anyone remember the area around South Meridian in 1979 or have information about the incident or the people involved?