Five East Texans Charged After Firing Weapons Near Oil Rig, Mocking Police

(Your reading enjoyment of the following story will be greatly enhanced if you play the video below at the same time.)

In our second Only in East Texas story in as many days, we bring you what sounds very much like a true-life scene from James McMurtry's "Chocktaw Bingo"...

At 1:45 in the wee hours of Sunday, a Nacogdoches County sheriff responded to a shots fired call in a rural area near the intersection of Highway 21 and FM 1196. When the cop arrived on the scene, he found four men and a woman raking a tree with gunfire from what has been described as "assorted semi-automatic rifles and handguns."

San Augustine Jail

Theresa Green

​We're not sure if this quintet's arsenal matched the "SKS rifle and a couple a full cases of that steel core ammo, with the Berdan primers from some East Bloc nation that no longer needs 'em," or the .50 Caliber Desert Eagle "made by badass Hebrews," or if they were equipped with "some surplus tracers for that old BAR," but it had indeed gotten dark and they were, in fact, having them a time.

And while there's no law against that, the tree they were raking with bullets reportedly stood dangerously close to an operational oil rig.

And so the cop wanted them to cease fire and head on home, but like we said, they were having them a time. They weren't about to let the law shut 'em down, especially because the cop was on the other side of the Attoyac River in Nacogdoches County from where they were in San Augustine County. According to KTRE, they reportedly "yelled a derogatory remark at him and challenged him, since he was on the other side of the river and could not reach them."

Hollis Thornton

​Unfortunately, their firepower was not matched by an equal caliber of brainpower. They seemed to have forgotten that cops A) have radios, and, B) can use them to contact other cops on the other side of the Attoyac River, which was precisely what the Nacogdoches County cop did.

All five of the shooters -- Vincent Brewer, 28; Hubert Green, 40; Theresa Green, 33; Howard McCarty, 39; and 48-year-old Hollis Thornton -- were charged with the Class A misdemeanor of deadly conduct.

McCarty was also charged with unlawfully carrying a weapon, public intoxication and illegally driving an ATV on a public road. Thornton and Brewer were each charged with DWI, and Hubert Green was also charged with illegally driving an ATV on a road.

And so this "one great big old party like you never saw" came to a close.