Welcome to another hilarious edition of Oklahoma’s Wackiest Criminals. This week, we bring you the weird tale of the Warr Acres “water worshipper,” a man KFOR reported has allegedly been entering businesses and churches for more than a decade, turning on the water and leaving — LOL, WTF. Most recently, the man reportedly walked into Mario Williams’ front yard and turned the hose on and then entered the garage without permission but left after Williams’ wife threatened to call the police.
Williams told KFOR police officers said they were familiar with the alleged trespasser and that “he suffers from a mental health issue.” Well, that is just kind of a bummer, to be honest, but not too surprising considering journalism nonprofit The Frontier reported last year that the number of Oklahomans seeking psychiatric crisis care increased by 21 percent between 2015 and 2018 and that “because resources are limited and service providers must treat the sickest people first, Oklahomans in need of mental health services are regularly turned away because they are not sick enough” and “as a result, people in need of services often don’t get care until they are in the midst of a crisis.”
While Williams said police told him the “water worshiper” is not dangerous, he argued that entering people’s homes without their permission is inherently dangerous and “he could easily be harmed or shot from people being self-defensive.” Jeez. Turns out wacky crimes are way funnier without all that pesky context. According to Oklahoma Policy Institute, 97,000 Oklahomans could access needed mental health or addiction treatment if the state would accept the billions of dollars in funding provided under the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, but then those Oklahomans might have a legit reason to say, “Thanks, Obama,” unironically. A petition to put the Medicaid expansion on the 2020 ballot was recently unsuccessfully challenged in court by conservative “think tank” Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs, presumably because they hate to spoil a good joke.
