MUSKOGEE, OKLAHOMA – The United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma announced that Lee Calhoun Phillips, age 46, of Morris, Oklahoma, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for one count of Leaving the Scene of an Accident Involving Nonfatal Injury in Indian Country.
The charge arose from an investigation by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
On July 7, 2025, Phillips pleaded guilty to the charge in federal district court. According to investigators, on September 28, 2023, Phillips struck a bicyclist while driving a Peterbilt truck westbound on Highway 16 south of Haskell, Oklahoma. Instead of stopping to check on the victim or rendering aid, Phillips left the scene of the collision. Two passing Oklahoma Department of Transportation workers performing landscape maintenance found the victim on the roadside, called emergency services, and stayed on the scene with the victim until law enforcement could arrive.
The crime occurred in Muskogee County, within the boundaries of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Reservation, in the Eastern District of Oklahoma.
The Honorable Raúl M. Arias-Marxuach, Chief Judge in the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, sitting by assignment, presided over the hearing. Phillips was remanded into the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service pending transportation to a designated United States Bureau of Prisons facility to serve a non-paroleable sentence of incarceration.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Jordan W. Howanitz represented the United States at the sentencing hearing.
Source: U.S. Attorney’s Office — Eastern District of Oklahoma — U.S. Department of Justice press release.