The call that cracked the case came from the driver’s own phone. Shortly before 11 p.m. on August 20, Jarrod Bishop — Duncan’s police training lieutenant, the officer who trained the rest of the department — called dispatch in the nearby town of Marlow to say he believed he had struck a deer, or something, in the roadway, and to ask for a report.
An hour earlier, Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers had been sent to US-81 near Rose Road in Stephens County for a call that was no deer: a crash on the shoulder of the highway, a driver who had left the scene, and a Rush Springs man who never made it home.
The deer call
The timeline in the case file is terse. At 9:39 p.m., OHP’s southwest regional communications center logged a report of a hit-and-run crash with great bodily injury on US-81 near Rose Road. The victim, 40-year-old David Setayesh of Rush Springs, was pronounced deceased at Duncan Regional Hospital. According to the affidavit, Setayesh and his girlfriend had been riding south on separate bicycles along the southbound shoulder, outside the lane of travel — and both bikes carried working red LED taillights that troopers verified on scene. The impact area was on the shoulder.
At 10:46 p.m., Bishop called Marlow police dispatch himself with the deer account. At 10:51 — five minutes later — troopers contacted him at his home in Duncan.
What the truck said
The white 2016 Ford F-150 Bishop had been driving told a different story. Its front passenger side was heavily damaged: the fender peeled back and nearly ripped off, a headlamp mostly missing, dark paint transfer smeared down the passenger side, dried blood on the fender. On the shoulder of US-81, troopers found Ford badge debris scattered 150 to 200 feet beyond the point of impact — fragments that helped identify the truck’s make and trim, and a distance that said speed.
Then there was Bishop. Multiple troopers noted a strong odor of alcohol at his home, and again at the hospital. He said he had drunk three or four beers — but only after getting home around 10 p.m., and he claimed he never noticed the damage until he was unloading the truck. He refused to consent to a blood draw, so troopers obtained a warrant and his blood was drawn at 1:51 a.m. He twice declined to give his phone passcode. At 2:52 a.m. on August 21, Bishop was booked into the Stephens County Jail.
The department’s trainer
Bishop, 47, holds the kind of rank departments hand to their most trusted hands: training lieutenant, the officer responsible for training Duncan’s police force. After the arrest, the department placed him on administrative leave and declined to comment, citing an ongoing internal investigation. The Highway Patrol’s Traffic Homicide Unit, whose reconstructionist wrote the affidavit behind the details above, is carrying the criminal side of the case.
The complaint that came first
Nor was the arrest the first time Bishop’s name reached a file. In July 2026, about a month before the crash, a complaint was made against Bishop over an incident described as a football game incident. No charges were ever filed from it, and the department has not said what came of it internally.
Bishop is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty — the same standard he spent a career teaching others to apply. The charges and bond that followed are covered in the follow-up post on this story.
He called it a deer. The evidence called it something else. How many rural crash reports begin with whichever story the driver wishes were true?
Sources
KXII · KSWO · KFOR · The Oklahoman
☕ Support this desk — buy us a coffee · tips fund records requests and server time
