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The family of a teenager found dead by the roadside after a Labor Day weekend party alleges he was “beat to death” by one or more individuals, according to a newly filed lawsuit.
Noah Presgrove, 19, was curled in the fetal position, wearing nothing but a pair of mismatched shoes and surrounded by his teeth when he was discovered near a stretch of U.S.-81 near Terral, Oklahoma, on September 4, 2023.
Nearly two years after the high school graduate’s demise, his family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against seven people, including four of the boy’s friends, one of their fathers, and the two owners of the house that hosted the party.
Presgrove had reportedly been drinking and partying for four days with his friends for a 22nd birthday party at a property a mile away from where a truck driver uncovered his remains.
The medical examiner’s report said Presgrove had died from “multiple blunt force injuries” to his head, neck, torso, and extremities.
The cause of the injuries has long remained a mystery. In May last year, the Oklahoma Department of Public Safety and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol said Presgrove's death was not being investigated as a murder.
The civil lawsuit, filed on Monday, seeks at least $75,000 for funeral costs, pain and suffering, lost earnings, and companionship, along with punitive damages.
The teen “was beat to death by one or more of the defendants,” the suit states, according to the Daily Mail. However, the complaint provided no evidence that the beating had taken place.
In the filing, the family did not specify who they believed was the culprit of the alleged attack. Neither does the lawsuit explicitly state that the beatings were intended to kill Presgrove.
“Although the death may have been unintended, hosting the party and beating of [Presgrove] was intentionally, malicious, and in reckless disregard of [his] rights,” the suit states.
Presgrove’s best friend, Jack Newton, and girlfriend, Carter Combs, were among those defendants named in the filing.
Newton allegedly bought alcohol that the victim consumed from Napoli's convenience store in Marlow – also a defendant named in the filing – which the plaintiffs argue made him culpable for his death.
Pregrove’s autopsy report showed that he was intoxicated at the time of his death, with a blood alcohol level of 0.14.
“The party was a civil conspiracy... to furnish alcoholic beverages to underaged and intoxicated individuals, such as [Presgrove], over the course of several days,” the lawsuit claimed.
Newton's father, Caleb Newton, was accused of allowing Presgrove access to an ATV, which had flipped earlier in the day. The elder Newton maintained he was never at the party.
A preliminary medical examiner's report states that, following the accident, Presgorve and his girlfriend, Carter, got into a fight.
Carter and two other girls, Avery Combs and Logan Jernigan, were accused of hosting the party.
The Combs’s father, Johnnie Wilcoxson, who owned the property where the party was held, and mother, Stevie Howard, who owned a trailer next to the house, were also named in the suit.
