Police in Tulsa, Oklahoma were called to respond to altercations between a Lebanese Christian family and their next-door neighbor twice in the past year. In both cases, members of the Jabara family were violently injured shortly after officers came to investigate the initial complaints.
Stanley Vernon Majors was charged last September with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, among other charges, for allegedly striking matriarch Haifa Jabara with his car hours after calling police on the family over a parking violation. Having been released from jail in May on reduced bond for that hit-and-run, Majors was then booked on suspicion of murder for the fatal shooting of Khalid Jabara Friday night.
That shooting occurred just minutes after police left the East Avenue street where the neighbors lived. Khalid Jabara had called in a suspicious activity complaint, after reportedly learning from Majors’ husband that Majors had acquired a gun and hearing tapping on his window. Officers were unable to make contact with Majors, however.
This disturbing pair of events had long roots that took hold soon after Majors moved from southern California to Tulsa in 2011.
Haifa Jabara first filed a protective order against Majors in August 2013, alleging that her neighbor “harassed” and “stalked” her. In court documents, Jabara recalls Major “knocking on windows late at nite, harassing me with ugly sex words over the phone.”
“He is very racist towards foreigners and blacks,” she wrote, also charging that Majors physically abused his elderly husband, who she said was “very kind to us.”
Her order was granted in November, requiring Majors to refrain from any form of contact with her and preventing him from possessing a firearm for five years. Majors then filed his own protective order against Khalid Jabara in July 2014 accusing his neighbor of stalking him and trashing his property.
Rebecca Abou-Chedid, a Jabara family friend and spokeswoman, told TPM that Majors’ order was granted because Khalid Jabara did not appear in court to contest it.
The protective orders did little to de-escalate a relationship that Abou-Chedid described as one-sided in its hostility.
In March 2015, Majors was arrested and charged with violating the protective order. Court records show Haifa Jabara told police that Majors directed “multiple racial slurs” at her and said he had told her, “Fuck you and I want to kill you.”
The arresting officers wrote in a report that Majors was aggressive with them, stopping to finish chugging his beer before allowing them to take him into custody.
Jabara’s daughter, Victoria Jabara Williams, recounted in a statement on Facebook that Majors’ attacks on the family’s heritage were common.
“He repeatedly attacked our ethnicity and perceived religion, making racist comments,” Williams wrote. “He often called us ‘dirty Arabs,’ ‘filthy Lebanese,’ ‘Aye-rabs,’ and ‘Mooslems.’ ”
Majors never appeared in court for violating the order, and Tulsa police opened a bench warrant for him.
By that fall, the situation between the neighbors escalated even further.
Court records show that around 2 p.m. on Sept. 12, Tulsa police Officer Steven Theimer responded to a call from Majors about a parking violation outside his East Avenue home. Theimer testifed that after informing the Jabaras that their car was parked the wrong way on the street, he spoke with Majors, who he described as “abrasive.” Majors rattled off a tirade of ethnic slurs, calling Haifa Jabara and her family “filthy Lebanese” who “throw gay people off the roof,” according to Theimer.
Hours later, at around 5:22 p.m., a woman driving down nearby E. 95th street saw a pair of sneakers lying in the road. Close by lay the bloodied body of Haifa Jabara.
She had suffered head trauma, a collapsed lung and several broken bones, according to a police report.
When police located Majors walking away from his vehicle at a nearby apartment complex, he spoke without solicitation of having hit a jogger with his car and mentioned the victim by name.
“Is she ok? Haifa?” an “extremely drunk and urinating” Majors said, according to a police incident report obtained by the Washington Post. “I was out driving my car, drunk. I’m always drunk and you guys never stop me. And there was this rabbit, and Haifa jumped out in front of my car.”
“Majors went on to repeat this with variations including that he ‘hit her’ and ‘I left because I was scared,’” the report read.
According to the Post, the car’s windshield was shattered and had “what appeared to be blood or tissue stuck on it.”
Majors was arrested and charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, leaving the scene of a collision involving injury, public intoxication and violating a protective order.
He was held in the Tulsa County Jail without bond and ordered to wear an ankle monitor if he did post bond. In May, Majors’ lawyer requested that his bond for the assault and battery charge be set at $30,000. His lawyers argued that Jabara had no memory of the accident and that the state had “no more evidence than slight proof that the defendant didn’t like the victim,” according to court documents.
Tulsa prosecutors argued that Majors “had demonstrated a wanton disregard for the life of the victim,” asking for bond to be set at $300,000.
Judge William LaFortune set Majors’ bond at $60,000 in a May 25 hearing. Majors’ husband, Stephen Schmauss, posted the bond and Majors was freed that day.
Majors still had been awaiting trial for the hit-and-run on Haifa Jabara when he allegedly shot her son on Friday.
