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In this update on Oklahoma’s drag queen principal:
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After Ditching Child Porn Charge on Questionable Grounds, Murnan’s 2020 Aggravated DUI Disappears
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Murnan Breaks Silence: Interview Reveals Attempt to Adopt Little Boy Outside of State Adoption Laws
This publication recently revealed that an Oklahoma school district hired an elementary school principal who regularly moonlights as a drag queen, was previously arrested for possession of both child pornography and drugs, and founded an organization to provide drag queen story hour events to children throughout the state. Shane Murnan, who also goes by the drag name Shantel Mandalay, is now head principal at John Glenn Elementary School within Western Heights Public Schools.
Murnan’s 2001 child pornography charge involved three judges in Payne County, Oklahoma. Murnan’s defense claimed that despite graphic images of young males engaged in sex acts being found on Murnan’s computer, he was never actually in possession of those images. Murnan’s attorney further argued that the boys in the photos could not be verified as being minors, saying “these were not small children”, a dangerous redefinition of the state’s laws protecting those under 18. At Murnan’s preliminary hearing, the strategy worked and the felony charge was dismissed.
Despite Judge Dave Allen stating “it is clear from a review of the pictures that they do represent child pornography” during a subsequent appeal by prosecutors, and his reinstatement of the charge, a third judge, Donald Worthington, eventually dropped the child pornography charge, leaving Murnan with only a misdemeanor for possession of marijuana. Despite dismissing the charge, Worthington states for the record his “personal opinion that you (Murnan) should be nowhere around young children”. With the felony dropped, Murnan retained his teaching certification in Oklahoma.
In follow up to the first article, this publication also reported that Murnan had hired Paul Stafford, a fellow drag queen known as Carmen Deveraux, as a Kindergarten classroom aide at John Glenn ES.
Murnan recently broke his silence concerning his lifestyle and past within a highly sympathetic interview with local publication Nondoc, claiming child safety as his top priority.
“Murnan, who is beginning his fifth year in administration, said student safety is extremely important and that he tells his teachers that any report about inappropriate campus behavior must be handled immediately.” – Sept. 11th Nondoc article.
And now, details concerning Murnan’s previously hidden 2020 arrest have come to light (hat tip to Reduxx’s Yuliah Alma) revealing Murnan’s concern for the safety of others to be situational at best.
After Ditching Child Porn Charge on Questionable Grounds, Murnan’s 2020 Aggravated DUI Disappears
For three years, an additional, September 2020, probable cause filing against Shane Murnan appears to have been motionless within the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s office. Newly obtained documents on the case show Shane Murnan was arrested during the early morning hours of Wednesday, September 16th, 2020, for driving with a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.23, nearly three times the legal limit.
According to Shantel Mandalay’s social media, each Tuesday night during that time in 2020, Murnan was hosting Topless Tuesday Karaoke until midnight.
Within arrest documents, Murnan also reported going to San Marcos, a Mexican restaurant in South Oklahoma City and having four margaritas, and then to Tramp’s, a gay bar approximately five miles north and having three vodka tonics, all on a school night. After being stopped for weaving lanes, Murnan struggled to roll down his car window, was unable to tell his debit card from his driver’s license, repeated questions with slurred speech and lacked balance as he was moved to the Oklahoma Highway Patrol (OHP) cruiser. Murnan identified himself as a principal (assistant) at Prairie Queen elementary school, his role and employer at the time, but could not tell officers where the school was located.
Under Oklahoma law, blowing a BAC of .05 to .07 can result in a DWI charge. A reading of 0.8 or higher is an automatic DUI. In cases of severely drunk drivers, and for the protection of the public, “Oklahoma laws require that any driver convicted of driving under the influence (DUI) or in actual physical control of a motor vehicle, aggravated DUI, with a blood alcohol content of 0.15 or higher, must install an ignition interlock device on every vehicle they own or which is registered to them”. An ignition interlock device tests the driver’s BAC before allowing the vehicle to start. Aggravated DUI also carries a longer jail sentence, higher fine, a substance abuse evaluation and a year of substance abuse testing at the driver’s expense, as well as mandated attendance at a victim impact panel.
Muran wasn’t tipsy, he was hammered and significantly over the BAC level mandating an enhanced charge of aggravated DUI in Oklahoma. Had OHP not intervened on that early morning, he could’ve killed someone. Yet somehow, there is no public-facing evidence that Murnan has experienced any of the lawful punishments for his crime and for endangering his fellow citizens.
The probable cause affidavit prepared by the OHP indicates that Murnan was to be arraigned on September 20, 2020, yet no record of his arraignment is available within the Oklahoma County Court system. This publication requested all documents related to the incident and any subsequent court case and only the affidavit was available.
If Murnan was arraigned and sentenced, and his record has since been expunged, the presiding judge would have acted outside of Oklahoma’s sentencing parameters for an aggravated DUI, which would’ve required a higher probation period and a five-year waiting period before expungement could be requested. After Murnan’s arrest by OHP, he was either never charged by the Oklahoma County DA’s office or significantly favored within the sentencing and expungement process. Why, and who protected Principal Murnan and not the public?
At the time of Murnan’s arrest, David Prater (D) was the district attorney (DA) in Oklahoma County. Prater had a history of granting political and ideological favors within public education, such as his unexplained dropping of charges against Joy Hofmeister, then State Superintendent of Public Instruction, in 2017. It’s unknown if Prater’s office also assisted Murnan with his DUI.
Murnan appears to have been unphased by the arrest. He went right out after school, on the day following his arrest, to host Thirsty Thursday at The Boom, declaring on social media, “We’re back!!! Your Thursday night party.”
Murnan Breaks Silence: Interview Reveals Attempt to Adopt Little Boy Outside of State Adoption Laws
Within Nondoc’s recent interview with Shane Murnan, published on September 11th, new concerns surfaced. Predictably, neither of the two journalists involved in the interview, Bennett Brinkman (education reporter) and Tres Savage (editor in chief), asked any of the obvious follow-up questions that a curious person would’ve pounced on. That’s simply not allowed within community journalism.
To begin the article, Murnan is described as an “award winning drag queen” and allowed to position himself as the victim as he leads readers to believe he’s backing down from his drag life and choosing education. According to the article:
Since controversy spread about his drag character, Murnan said he has chosen to pause his performances at the weekly Sunday Brunch Revival at The Boom, a prominent gay bar in northwest Oklahoma City. “I’ve stepped back because, like I said, my first priority is my school and my job,” he said. “I just thought I probably needed to take a break and evaluate how life is right now and take a break for myself, because I can’t keep living like I am right now with all the threats.”
Principal Murnan has paused his involvement in Sunday morning Christian bashing during the Sunday Brunch Revival, handing those reigns over to his John Glenn Elementary School Kindergarten aide Carmen Deveraux.
Shantel Mandalay is still listed as the regular host of The Boom’s Say My Name drag competition each Thursday night.
Last Thursday, despite Murnan’s “step back”, his Say My Name event continued. It is unknown if Murnan was last Thursday’s host but no other host has been publicized.
However, the biggest revelation within the Nondoc article came as Murnan divulged that he had been attempting to adopt a little boy during the time period surrounding his 2001 arrest for child pornography possession. According to the article, “allegations received by Stillwater Public Schools and the police came after he (Murnan) had attempted to adopt a son, which was not legal for LGBTQ community members at the time”.
Though knowing he was not legally allowed to adopt at that time, Murnan admits to completing the adoption process, claiming no one ever inquired about his sexuality or lifestyle:
“They never asked me if I was gay,” Murnan said of the adoption process. “I went through all the parenting classes and all the background checks — did everything — and they just never asked me if I was gay, and I never told them. And so right before my whole adoption was certified and I was going to get to pick him up, one of my coworkers — I found out later — had called them anonymously and told them that I was gay. And so, they terminated my adoption, and I lost my little boy because she hated me because I was gay.”
Murnan was subverting adoption law at the time, and despite the exhaustive process in Oklahoma required to become an adoptive parent, including a home study, background checks, interviews and extensive reference requirements, we’re to believe no one ever inquired as to Murnan’s sexuality or lifestyle as a single, male seeking to adopt a small child. We’re to believe no one lied throughout that process. Murnan employs a don’t ask, don’t tell narrative, and then labels himself the victim when someone outed him “because I was gay”, not because he was lying by omission within a legal process involving a child’s well-being. And Nondoc didn’t ask one question about the process and how it could’ve failed to ask critical, required questions of Murnan.
From a 2020 interview with The Oklahoma Gazette, we know Murnan first became involved with drag during his time as a Stillwater PS elementary school teacher where his child porn charge was issued. According to the article:
Mandalay remembers seeing drag for the first time right out of college at a club in Stillwater. He realized one of his student’s brothers was a performer.
“That was my first moment of getting to meet someone that did it, and he was so nice to me. He actually painted my face the first time and helped me realize that it’s OK to be me,” he said.
With his interview with NonDoc, “Murnan said he originally began performing drag when he was coming out as gay, embracing the historically rebellious art form as a “therapeutic” practice in safe community spaces”.
Let’s review. Around the time of his arrest, this single man was coming out as gay, delving into drag, receiving child pornography on his computer, teaching fifth grade and trying to adopt a little boy, yet Nondoc leaves Murnan’s narrative surrounding the child porn charge and failed adoption unquestioned. Within what such outlets openly embrace as community journalism, all instinctual and logical warning bells must be ignored and suppressed lest they endanger the larger narrative. The final lingering and consistently unspoken question remains, Where does that leave children?
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