Mom recounts moments son was shot and killed followed by manhunt for suspect
NEWALLA, Okla. (KFOR) — The mother of a man allegedly shot and killed by a man who led U.S. Marshals on a days-long manhunt says was with her son as he took his last breaths, and he was a kind, loving person, who did not deserve to die.
News 4 reported earlier this month when 32-year-old Jacob “Jake” Price was shot and killed at a Midwest City apartment complex.
In the following days, police identified Ryan Archer as the suspect and believed him to be hiding somewhere in Lincoln County.
That led to a days-long manhunt by Lincoln County Sheriffs Deputies, U.S. Marshals and Oklahoma City Police K9s—who eventually found Archer on Wednesday and took him into custody for Price’s murder.
Price’s mother, Charity Shuler, was with Price the night he was killed.
Shuler has been through the ringer—through the one thing no parent ever should.
“It was so fast,” Shuler told News 4 on Thursday. “I still can’t believe it. Cannot believe it.”
Yet, on this Thanksgiving Day, she still finds it in her heart, to be thankful.
Thankful—she was there as he took his final breaths.
“I'm thankful,” she said. “I'm so thankful to God I was with him.”
‘He’ was her oldest son, Jake Price.
“I almost looked up to him in a way,” Shuler said. “He really had it together. Everybody loved him.”
At 32, going on 33, he’d begun a new chapter in his life
“He worked, he was a plumber, for the union,” she said.
He’d recently moved out on his own for the first time, to a Midwest City apartment complex.
“He was a hard worker, he was so full of life,” Shuler said. “He was happy all the time.”
It’s that apartment where Shuler found herself staying with jake Nov. 18—to comfort him following a breakup with his girlfriend.
As things happened, his ex-girlfriend still lived at the complex, and brought a man over.
Shuler says jake and the man bumped into each other in the complex earlier in the day, and didn’t much care for each other.
She thought it ended there, until jake stepped out of the apartment later that night.
“He said I’ll be right back, I’m running outside again, I’ll be right back in,” Shuler said. “And he walked out the door, it hadn’t even been one minute, I’m not even kidding you… I heard a sound, you know, a gunshot.”
The next three minutes felt more like an eternity.
“He flung the door open, bleeding so bad,” she said. “And he said ‘mom take me to the hospital I’ve been shot…’ and as fast as he told me that he went back down the stairs… and so I get down back to the bottom the stairs, and he collapsed.”
It didn’t feel real.
“I was gonna but a tourniquet on him, and then I realized he was fading,” Shuler said. “So I just put him in my arms and I held him. And told him I loved him, and ‘please don’t go Jake.’ And he’s barely, barely breathing—you know what I mean. I knew he was dying right there.”
Before long, she says police showed up, pulled her away from Jake and whisked her into the back of a squad car.
“That was the last time I got to see him or anything,” she said. “I didn’t get to really talk to him”
It wouldn’t be until 5 a.m., after hours of police interrogations, that she officially learned the news—Jake was dead.
“They said—'there’s no easy way to tell you this,’” Shuler said. “And I knew right then. Couldn’t believe it. I mean, I knew. But I couldn’t believe it.”
She spent the next couple days coming to grips with something she never thought imaginable.
“I never even thought it a week ago,” Shuler said. “I never thought this. Jake was strong. He was living right.”
Then, this past week she saw News 4’s reports about a wanted murder suspect on the loose in Lincoln County.
The suspect? Ryan archer.
Shuler immediately recognized him as the man who she said had been visiting Jake’s ex-girlfriend the night Jake was shot.
“I was like, what? I didn’t know it was that guy,” Shuler said.
Finally, on Wednesday, with the help of U.S. Marshals and Oklahoma City Police K9s, Lincoln County sheriff’s deputies brought Archer into custody.
“I’m so glad,” Shuler said. “I’m so, so glad.”
Shuler still can’t process it all—her whirlwind of a thanksgiving week
“I just never thought in my head that that could happen,” she said. “I just never thought it would happen to Jake.”
She is thankful—for what was.
“I’m thankful Jake was here the time he was here,” Shuler said. “He taught me a lot.”
But she’ll never be thankful for the torture that comes with losing a child.
“It’s the worst. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever felt,” she said. “It’s the deepest pain. It’s so bad. It’s the worst kind of pain I’ve ever felt. “