Man hospitalized after getting beaten near Lake Texoma

SHERMAN, Texas (KXII) - A man is hospitalized after he was beaten in Marshall County near Lake Texoma.

It happened at the start of the holiday weekend.

A warning for the video above, some of the images are very graphic.

“He’s never believed that violence solves anything, he’s not that kind of guy,” said his wife Brenda Merchant.

Brenda says she and her husband Mark have been coming to Lake Texoma for 28 years.

While watching fireworks with friends Thursday night, she said Mark went over to talk to a group next to them.

“He had had quite a few to drink. It’s what we do when we’re down here sometimes, most of the time,” she said.

She said they asked him to leave, so he came back to their friends.

She went home to sleep, but he went back to the beach.

She said he told a trooper a group of boys there wanted to beat him up, so the trooper told him to go home, but he stayed.

He came home around 5 a.m., and she said she didn’t even recognize him.

“He turns on the light, and when he turned on the light, I just saw the face of a monster. Because it was so bad,” Brenda said.

He remembers boys taking turns beating him until he was unconscious and trying to drag their golf cart into the lake.

Then she said he walked back barefoot.

She drove him to an Ardmore hospital, then he was flown to Oklahoma City.

The 63-year-old is recovering from brain bleeding, a broken jaw, eye socket and several bones in his face.

“I don’t know what kind of monster you have to be to do this to a person and leave them for dead,” Brenda said.

Marshall County Sheriff Danny Cryer said the incident was reported around 10 hours after it happened, and they have two juvenile persons of interest.

Brenda’s offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

“I forget to eat. I can’t sleep. All I do is work on this,” she said.

She’s not allowed to visit him at the hospital due to COVID-19.

The Marshall Co. Sheriff’s Office said this is an ongoing investigation.

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