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Updated: 11:24 AM Feb 2, 2012
Elderly Ada man tells survival story
ADA, OK - Last January an 86-year-old Ada man fought for his life after being brutally attacked in his home. Sara Humphrey sat down with the victim and his daughter and has his story of survival.
Posted: 10:44 AM Feb 2, 2012Reporter: Sara Humphrey Email Address: sara.humphrey@kxii.com |
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ADA, OK - Last January an 86-year-old Ada man fought for his life after being brutally attacked in his home. Sara Humphrey sat down with the victim and his daughter and has his story of survival.
Almost a year ago to the day, 86-year-old Claude Arterburn was robbed, stabbed, viciously beaten a baseball bat and left for dead inside his Ada home.
Arterburn said, "Them boys walked right over me I guess, or around me."
Pontotoc County Sheriff's Deputies didn't discover Arterburn until three days later when Ada police officer Kathy Umbewust conducted a traffic stop on two teenage suspects driving Arterburn's stolen pickup and sent authorities to check on Arterburn.
Arterburn was found in a pool of blood in his dining room and barely clinging to life.
Umbewust later received the Live Saving Medal for saving Arterburn's life.
Arterburn's daughter Shirley Phillips, who out of town at the time and said, "When I got the call that night they said 'This is Valley View hospital and we have your dad.'"
Phillips said she barely recognized her father. Every bone in Arterburn's face had been broken and he had been stabbed multiple times in the head and hand.
Arterburn said, "I was in the hospital and I was laying in that bed, I could see some angels. I opened my eyes up and my daughters were sitting right over there looking right over there at me."
While Arterburn was recovering in the hospital police charged then 18-year-old Trey Irvin, Grant Johnson and Daniel Vivier - both 17 - with the crime.
Irvin was the first of the trio to be sentenced and last week he received forty years in prison. He is required to serve at least eighty-five percent of the sentence.
"There isn't no use for me feeling real bad for them," Arterburn said. "I let the district attorney and them handle it and they are doing a wonderful job."
"The youngest one [Johnson] is still in the county jail and his court date is set for May the 1st," Phillips said. "The other individual [Vivier], Popa knew him and helped him, he is doing the insanity plea. However, I don't believe that."
Arterburn said he hasn't returned to the scene of the crime since but keeps memories of it and his late wife in his new home.
"I have a picture of the old house that a lady painted and it's hanging up there and I see it and I look at it," Arterburn said. "I get up I feel pretty good. I get along, don't have any headaches. I feel pretty good. Real good."
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