Small Town Angry Over Retarded Man’s Beating Death : Oklahoma: Two teen-agers are charged in brutal killing of Robert Ballard, 33, who had a mental age of 5.

First, Robert Ballard would visit the police station to get a light for his cigarette. Then he would tiptoe along a wood-framed flower bed in front of the Main Street Cafe, over to the Dairy Deal for a Pepsi and an ice cream cone, and on to Joe Haley’s Texaco station.

He was always talking, always smiling. And if he didn’t have time to stop, he would wave.

“He’d come up and say things out of the blue like, ‘I can’t swim,’ ” Haley said. “And we’d say, ‘Well, you can’t swim, then. That’s all right.’ It was like talking to any 5-year-old. He was kind of like family, really.”

But Ballard was not 5 years old--he was 33, and had been mentally retarded since birth. And his daily constitutionals are forever ended.

Last month, Robert Ballard was brutally murdered; two local youths--ages 14 and 17--were charged. For Salina, a town of 1,500 60 miles northeast of Tulsa, it was a death in the family.

“You know how they say that you never know how much you miss someone until they’re gone? That’s the way it is,” said cafe owner Anna Rutherford. “He was everywhere. He’d wave to everybody. And everyone took care of him; they all looked out for him.”

Someone planted purple impatiens in the ditch where Ballard was killed--a fitting memorial. The flowers, now faded and wilted, never had a chance in the relentless heat of the late spring sun.

Likewise, Ballard had no chance to survive a mean, merciless attack.

As his assailants pinned him on the floor of his bedroom and wildly swung their fists at his head and stomach, he cried out, “OK, OK, I quit!”

They didn’t.

Instead, they chased him out of his modest clapboard house where he lived alone, down a narrow dirt path and into the steep ditch below Lake Hudson, beating him with a wooden slat ripped out of the door frame, a toilet seat and a plastic, talk-back computer toy.

“Somebody help me!” he begged.

No one did.

Any other man might have been able to fend off the attackers, two boys no bigger than Little Leaguers. Johnny Jumper Jr., 17, and Herman (Chooch) Snell II, 14, are charged with first-degree murder in the May 1 attack.

“As far as him being able to defend himself . . . a couple of punks like that wouldn’t have been able to do that to a normal person,” said Nolan Foster, who owns a flower shop next to the Police Department, 250 yards away from where Ballard lived.

What was the motive? No one is really sure.

According to testimony in a preliminary hearing, the boys wanted to rob Ballard to buy more beer and to get out of town. But everyone knew Ballard never carried any money--his welfare checks were deposited automatically, and his aunt had set up accounts at the Dairy Deal and a food mart.

Jumper contends in his confession that the attack was prompted by a lewd comment Ballard made about Lucille Wilson, 20, who lived nearby. Prosecutors say Jumper said it to impress the woman; she denies Ballard bothered her.

The boys admitted drinking beer and a mixture of 190-proof alcohol and orange Kool-Aid prior to the attack. When an investigator asked Snell why he beat Ballard, he responded: “I was drunk.”

“If they had told me he was involved in breaking into a store or something like that, I would have believed it,” said Mary Marney, Snell’s mother. “I still don’t believe this. It’s a nightmare. Neither one of them would have done something like this in their right mind.”

But Mary Hair, Ballard’s care-giver, said: “I think they’re just mean.”

As far as is known, Jumper had no criminal background. Snell had been charged twice in juvenile court for attempted burglary and auto theft, according to court records. He had been kicked out of school, and he walked away from a Tulsa youth shelter a month before the killing.

Snell’s mother said he “had a potty mouth. That’s why they think of him in this town the way they do. In a way, you could call him a troublemaker. But if every guy stopped to think about what they did when they were kids, adults probably didn’t like them, either.”

Residents were infuriated by a newspaper photo of the smiling boys as they walked to the Mayes County courtroom for their preliminary hearing.

They snickered when the medical examiner testified that chunks of plastic from the computer toy were found embedded in Ballard’s skull.

“Everybody in the courtroom was crying, and those boys sat there like he was giving a weather report,” said Ballard’s aunt, Jeanie Fuller.

Wilson testified that Snell joked after the beating that Ballard’s eyeball was missing and he could poke his finger through the socket.

Defense lawyer David Van Horn will argue Monday that Jumper, who was charged as an adult, should be treated as a juvenile. A week later, prosecutors will try to persuade a judge that Snell, charged as a juvenile, should be tried as an adult.

Both boys are being held without bond.

During the preliminary hearing, Jeanie Fuller brought a 2 1/2-page remembrance she wrote of Ballard--how much he liked playing pool, eating popcorn and watching his favorite movie, “The Wizard of Oz.”

She said her nephew was born with brain damage and suffered additional problems when his parents divorced and he was moved in and out of institutions. Twelve years ago, she moved him from a Muskogee boarding school into a house she had bought for him. In Salina, he was happy.

“He didn’t have a care in the world,” she said. “He was always so happy, just like a little kid. That’s what is so sad about this.”

About 150 people attended his funeral. They heard the Rev. Bobby Belew describe Ballard’s last sojourn: “Angels escorted him to glory. He will no longer suffer as he did here.”

And they remembered an unlikely friend.

“I’ll never forget what Jeanie said when she went to pick him up,” said Anna Rutherford. “She said, ‘I’ll bet the town is going to hate me for doing this.’ I think she probably realizes by now how untrue that was.”