Today In Oklahoma

The Department of Public Safety is closed today after a car hit a fire hydrant and flooded part of the building at NE 36 and Martin Luther King Blvd., according to KOCO-5.

MIDWEST CITY — A Midwest City woman’s cell phone brought police to her aid Monday night, even though she didn’t utter a word to 911 dispatchers, authorities said.

The call resulted in the arrest of Joseph Degeare, 37, on suspicion of attempted first-degree rape and domestic assault and battery, Midwest City Police Chief Brandon Clabes said.

March winds could be brisk today as rain chances linger through Friday.The forecast from the National Weather service is as follows:

Today: A 20 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms after noon.

Forecasters say a wetter-than-usual winter and a jet stream ripping over the part of the country known as "Tornado Alley” could lead to an active spring — perhaps starting with the strong twister that nicked a small western Oklahoma town Monday night.

"It’s time to get ready,” Michelann Ooten of the Oklahoma Department of Emergency Management said Tuesday as she surveyed damage from a storm that destroyed five homes and tore the roofs off several others in Hammon.

The nation typically will see 70 to 100 tornadoes by early March, but only 42 had been reported until Monday night’s Oklahoma tornado.

A woman was set on fire and her house was set on fire with her children inside this afternoon in southeast Oklahoma City, police said.

About 74,000 Oklahomans have Alzheimer’s disease, but the number is rapidly growing, according to a report by the Alzheimer’s Association.

More than 96,000 Oklahomans are expected to have Alzheimer’s by 2025, largely because of the aging of the baby boomer population.

"The disease is growing, unfortunately, and we only expect that to get worse,” said Keili McEwen, Alzheimer’s Association regional director.

A mother blown out of a bedroom in an explosion Sunday says she woke up under a burning mattress outside the home near Blanchard.

Tanya Sumner, 25, described waking up on the ground next to her daughter, 2-year-old Bella Anne.

"I couldn’t push the bed off of us,” Sumner said in a telephone interview Tuesday.

MIDWEST CITY — No idea. Annie Thrower had no idea why she bought that banjo the first night she saw it hanging on a wall in Butch’s Music Shop in Lafayette, Ind.

TULSA — Three Tulsa County sheriff’s employees have resigned and three others have been disciplined after an internal investigation revealed employee-on-employee use of Taser stun guns, Undersheriff Brian Edwards said Tuesday.

Edwards said he could not give the names of those involved or elaborate on the discipline they received, citing the county’s personnel policy.

However, according to Tulsa County records and a source who asked to remain anonymous, the employees who resigned were Sgts.

James Earl Ray pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., 39, in Memphis, Tenn. Ray died in prison April 23, 1999. King ...