Norman police investigating death of former state lawmaker
Norman police investigating death of former state lawmaker
Update: Fri. June 7, 2019 NORMAN — police are investigating the fatal shooting of a former state senator.
Jonathan Nichols body was found in his Norman home, and a gun was on a table across the room, law enforcement sources told The Oklahoman.
Norman police responded to a report of an individual with a gunshot wound at 8:44 p.m. Wednesday to the 3900 block of Annalane Drive, according to Norman police.
Once inside the residence, officers found Nichols, 53, deceased.
Nichols, a Republican, represented Norman in the Oklahoma Senate from 2000 to 2012. He was serving as a senior policy advisEr to House Speaker Charles McCall at the time of his death.
McCall said Nichols joined his staff in November. Nichols also previously served as chief of staff for former Senate Pro Tem Brian Bingman and his successor, Pro Tem Mike Schulz.
In 2016, former University of Oklahoma President David Boren appointed Nichols to serve as vice president of governmental relations at OU to fight state budget cuts to higher education.
Boren’s successor, James Gallogly, fired a handful of high-level university administrators on his first day as OU’s president in 2018. Nichols was one of them.
Interim OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. said Nichols was valuable in maintaining the university's relationships with civic and legislative leaders. His commitment to public service made him an asset to OU, he said in a statement.
Nichols worked as an assistant Cleveland County district Attorney for more than six years before his election to the state Senate. He had to resign from the Cleveland County district attorney's office in order to serve in the Legislature.
Current and former lawmakers mourned Nichols' passing, including Sen. Rob Standridge, who succeeded Nichols in representing Senate District 15.
Second former GOP State Senator found shot dead in two days, this time in Oklahoma
Second former GOP state senator found shot dead in two days, this time in Oklahoma
A second former GOP state senator was found dead from a gunshot within a span of two days.
Former Oklahoma state Sen. Jonathan Nichols, 53, was found dead inside his home in Norman on Wednesday night from an apparent gunshot wound, police said. Cops are working with the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office to determine the exact cause and manner of death.
His death comes just one day after former Arkansas state Sen. Linda Collins-Smith, 56, was found fatally shot outside her home in Pocahontas on Tuesday. Police are investigating her death as a homicide.
Police could not identify Collins-Smith's body until Thursday because it had decomposed considerably. It's not known how long she had been dead when her body was discovered.
but her former press secretary Ken Yang told
KATV that neighbors said they had heard gunshots a day or two earlier.
Both Nichols and Collins-Smith were Republicans. However, Collins-Smith started out as a Democrat when she was first elected to the Arkansas state Senate in 2010 and switched parties in 2011.
Arkansas and Oklahoma lie-side-by-side, with a distance of under 500 miles between Pocahontas, Ark., and Norman, Okla., where the deaths occurred.
June 6, 2019 -
Former Arkansas state Sen. Linda Collins-Smith reportedly found shot to death at her home
Arkansas police confirm dead body is former state lawmaker
Arkansas police confirm dead body is former state lawmaker
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Authorities in Arkansas on Thursday confirmed that a body found outside the home of a former Republican state lawmaker was hers, and police are investigating her death as a homicide.
Police did not give a cause of death, but said Wednesday that they're investigating the case as a homicide. No arrests have been made and no suspects have been named in her death.
The Arkansas Republican Party on Tuesday said Collins-Smith was dead, but authorities had initially been unable to confirm the remains found were hers because of the condition of the body. Property records showed the home was owned by Collins-Smith and her former husband, retired Circuit Judge Philip Smith.
The couple divorced in October. They were in the midst of a court fight over properties divided following the divorce, including a motel.
State Police said they didn't expect to make any additional statements about the case until an arrest is made. A Randolph County judge on Wednesday issued an order sealing documents and statements obtained by police during the investigation.
Police have not said when Collins-Smith was killed. Collins-Smith, previously very active on social media, last posted to her Twitter account on May 27. Her account has since been disabled. Ken Yang, her former communications director in the Senate, has said the former lawmaker's family has asked for privacy and didn't want to comment Thursday.
Collins-Smith served one term in the state House and was originally elected as a Democrat in 2010. But she switched parties and became a Republican in 2011, the year before the GOP won control of both chambers of the Legislature.
She was elected to the state Senate in 2014 and was one of the most conservative lawmakers in the majority-GOP chamber. She clashed frequently with GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson over the state's Medicaid expansion and other issues, including a bathroom bill she proposed in 2017.
Collins-Smith dropped her proposal , which would have prohibited individuals from using bathrooms in government buildings that do not match their gender at birth, after it failed to advance past a Senate committee.
Collins-Smith was defeated in her bid for re-election in the 2018 Republican primary.
