McALESTER, OK — A Tulsa man has died in prison seven months into serving a life sentence for killing his Lebanese neighbor in what prosecutors said was a hate crime.
Stanley Vernon Majors, 63, died in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. He was found dead in his bed in the maximum-security prison’s infirmary. Officials said the death would be investigated and did not reveal why Majors was in the infirmary.
Majors was convicted of murder, a hate crime and other offenses for harassing, intimidating and then shooting Khalid Jabara to death.
“We have been informed of his death and are working through that,” Jabara’s sister, Vicky Jabara, told CNN. “We continue to work to honor Khalid’s memory through bail reform, victims’ rights and combating hate, and this news does nothing to change that focus.”
Jabara, 37, died in the hospital after being shot several times by Majors in August 2016. But what happened in the years before the shooting tells the real story of Majors’ antipathy toward the Jabara family.
A history of harassment and intimidation
When Khalid Jabara was shot on the doorstep of his family’s Tulsa home, his family didn’t have to guess who his killer was. They knew instinctively it was their next-door neighbor.
Majors had been harassing the family for years, mostly because of their Lebanese heritage. Long before Majors killed Jabara he attacked Jabara’s mother, Haifa, by running her over with his car, according to police.
“I said it’s done. He did what he wanted to do. It’s done. That’s it,” Haifa Jabara told CNN last year of her feelings after she was attacked.
But it wasn’t. Majors killed her son Khalid months after the Jabara family had gotten a restraining order against him.
The racist next door
Majors was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Jabara’s death. He was also convicted of misdemeanor charges of malicious intimidation and harassment, charges commonly referred to as hate crimes under Oklahoma law.
He was still awaiting trial for running over and badly injuring Jabara’s mom.
“The news of his death come on the third anniversary of the date he ran over our mother,” Vicky Jabara told CNN. “[And] it came two years and a month after he killed Khalid.”
The pain the family has experienced hasn’t subsided one bit.
