Teenager's thumb cut off in possible Halloween ritual, police say

<br>TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ A teenager was shot, stabbed and his thumb was cut off in what police suspect was a Halloween ritual. <br><br>Two men dressed in black, Gothic clothes attacked 16-year-old Jonathan

Friday, November 1st 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

TULSA, Okla. (AP) _ A teenager was shot, stabbed and his thumb was cut off in what police suspect was a Halloween ritual.

Two men dressed in black, Gothic clothes attacked 16-year-old Jonathan McGregor in a wooded area early Thursday, police said. One of the men wore a flaming pentagram on his shirt.

Thomas Ryan Burger, 19, and Justin Jay Todd, 20, were arrested on complaints of shooting with intent to kill and assault with a deadly weapon.

Todd told police he and Burger intended to start fires in the woods in celebration of Halloween, court records show.

McGregor was shot in the right side of his chest and had 15 stab wounds on his upper body, arms, back, shoulders and legs. He was hospitalized in serious condition and was expected to survive the injuries.

The teenager said Burger drove him to the wooded area and then attacked him, according to the arrest report. He also said a man named Justin participated in the attack.

McGregor said the men were acquaintances and that they had invited him to a Halloween party in the woods, Officer Scott Walton said.

``We believe that they had had disagreements before,'' he said. ``There was a little bad blood between them.''

Burger, arrested later in his home, apparently had tried to wash off the white face paint he had been wearing. The paint matched white face paint that McGregor wore, a police report says.

Police found a gas can and bloody clothing in the woods.

At Burger's home, authorities seized a .45-caliber revolver, a dagger-type boot knife, a butterfly knife, a fixed blade knife and tubes of white and black face paint.

They also seized a paperback book titled ``Necronomicon,'' which contains rituals and incantations. The book is an early 20th-century American work of fiction about eighth-century writings in Damascus and is sometimes thought to actually have been written by an Arab in the eighth century.