Tulsa Man Accused Of Breaking Into Car Fights To Clear His Name

A Tulsa man is working to clear his name even though the case against him was recently dismissed.

Ross Lickteig was charged with a felony in Rogers County. He said he has proof he didn't commit the crime but no one will listen to him.

Lickteig has no criminal record and a good job, so he was shocked to learn in April there was a felony warrant out for his arrest.

He was accused of breaking into a car in the parking lot of the Hard Rock hotel in December.

"I have evidence, there's no possible way I could've done this,” he said.

Medical records show Lickteig was in a leg cast from November to mid-April.

He doesn't know who, but someone said Lickteig looked like the guy in surveillance video. Police agreed and the district attorney got a warrant and Lickteig turned himself into the jail.

"Surely someone can look at the video and see the guy's leg and see he's not in a cast and see my thing, call the doctor and say, he cut the cast off a week and a half after this thing happened, that he had a cast, there's no way he didn't have a cast on,” Lickteig said.

He assumed someone would figure it out and the case would go away, but, that didn't happen.

"I ended up borrowing money, which was humiliating, and got an attorney,” he said.

He spent about $4,000 on top of his mounting medical bills and then he ran out of days off at work because each time he went to court, it got postponed.

His attorney told him taking it to trial could take a year and cost a lot more or they could make the case go away right now, so Lickteig reluctantly agreed.

"If you pay $300 restitution, it's not an admission of guilt. Pay the money, we'll drop everything and won't re-file against you and be done today,” he said.

Even though the case was dismissed, the arrest is still on his record.

"I'm always going to have a felony arrest and that I paid restitution,” said Lickteig. “They say it's not an admission of guilty, but it feels like it and I hate it."

The Catoosa detective said he sent surveillance pictures of the crime out to various agencies and got back three names and one was Lickteig. The detective got pictures of all three and he was the closest match.

Neither police nor the D.A. would give us the video.

The detective said the D.A.'s office decided there was enough probable cause to file the charge. The D.A.'s office said they agreed to dismiss the charges because the victim got compensated for her loss.

Lickteig hopes to get his record expunged.