On November 6, 2025, 16-year-old Eden Grace Ferrell was struck and killed in a hit-and-run in Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. Her mother, Amber Small (formerly Jackson), held her daughter’s hand in the street as she took her final breaths.

Now, Eden’s family has been informed that proposed federal plea resolutions could result in approximately 34 months of total incarceration, including time already served, for the person accused of driving the vehicle that struck her. Other defendants could receive probation or time served. These are proposed outcomes communicated to the family, rather than final sentences.

Eden should have had decades but now her family is being asked to consider months.

I am a close family friend who loves Amber like a sister. I created this petition with her blessing to demand accountability for Eden and support her larger goal: Eden’s Law, proposed federal legislation to strengthen protections for children who become victims of serious violent crimes in Indian Country.

What happened to Eden?

According to publicly reported federal proceedings, Timothy Thompson is accused of driving the vehicle that struck Eden from behind and leaving the scene. Reported federal charges include involuntary manslaughter, assault resulting in serious bodily injury, failure to stop after an accident involving death, and conspiracy to tamper with an official proceeding.

Eden was walking beside her best friend, who survived that night. Her experience and rights deserve serious consideration, too.

While these allegations remain subject to the federal legal process, Eden’s family deserves to understand how the proposed resolutions were reached and to be meaningfully heard before decisions become final.

Understanding McGirt and federal jurisdiction

In 2020, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma recognized that the Muscogee (Creek) Reservation had never been disestablished. Together with related decisions and existing federal law, this changed how criminal jurisdiction is recognized and exercised across much of eastern Oklahoma. 

Depending on the circumstances, crimes committed in Indian Country may fall under federal, tribal, state, or overlapping jurisdiction. Different courts may apply different criminal statutes and sentencing provisions.

McGirt itself does not require lighter sentences; the question is how the jurisdictional framework, applicable criminal laws, and prosecutorial decisions affected the proposed outcomes in Eden’s case.

Public court reporting has also described allegations that investigators were initially told the damage to the vehicle resulted from striking a deer, and that others later corroborated that account. These remain allegations unless and until established through a plea or trial. Each defendant retains the constitutional and legal rights afforded under federal law. Victims have rights, too and Eden’s family deserves for those rights to have real meaning.

Eden’s Law: Protecting Children Beyond This Case

Amber wants her daughter’s legacy to help protect other children and spare families from facing the same painful questions.

Eden’s Law would seek a narrowly tailored legislative or reform within the existing criminal jurisdiction framework for serious violent crimes against children in Indian Country.

We are asking Congress to examine where additional state prosecutorial authority may be necessary and legally appropriate, whether federal charging and sentencing laws adequately address these crimes, and how federal, tribal, and state authorities can better coordinate prosecutions.

Any proposal should be developed through meaningful consultation with Tribal Nations and respect for tribal sovereignty and constitutional rights. Our goal is clear: children deserve effective legal protection, and families deserve a justice system capable of delivering meaningful accountability regardless of jurisdiction.

We also seek stronger coordination among federal, state, and tribal authorities, and clearer protection for victims’ families. Our hope is to ensure that jurisdictional complexities never leave a child’s death without a clear path to meaningful criminal accountability.

Eden herself was a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. Her Native identity is part of who she was. This effort respects Native communities, treaty rights, and tribal sovereignty. It calls for legislation developed through meaningful consultation with Tribal Nations, with their consent where required by law. We are asking for clarity about the federal justice system’s handling of Eden’s case and whether existing laws provide adequate protections for child victims.

We believe protecting children, honoring tribal sovereignty, and upholding constitutional rights must remain central to any reform.

As a friend of Eden’s family, I’m asking the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma and the United States Department of Justice to:

1.      Pursue meaningful accountability for Eden, reconsidering the proposed resolutions and fully considering the family’s objections within the law.

2.      Provide transparency about the plea agreements, charges, and potential sentences to the fullest extent legally permitted.

3.      Protect victims’ rights and ensure Eden’s family and the surviving young woman receive every applicable opportunity to be heard.

4.      Develop Eden’s Law, examining a narrowly tailored federal child-victim jurisdiction exception, stronger intergovernmental prosecution procedures, and other lawful reforms that respect tribal sovereignty.

Help us turn Eden’s tragedy into lasting change

Eden was a daughter, sister, friend, artist, writer, and mentor to younger children. She loved poetry, music, books, making jewelry, and spending time with her family. She had dreams and a future. Her family cannot change what happened last year, but they can demand what happens next be examined in the light. I am standing beside them in asking for accountability, transparency and meaningful justice. If you believe victims’ families deserve to be heard, stand with us.

Amber cannot bring her daughter home, but she hopes that by fighting for Eden she can help spare another family from experiencing this devastating loss and the painful questions that follow. Eden’s siblings, relatives, and friends carry an absence that will never go away because a 16-year-old girl who should still be here is gone. Neither Eden’s identity nor the identity of anyone accused in this case should ever be exploited to divide people who should be standing together in demanding answers about her death.

We are asking for peaceful, lawful support in holding decision-makers accountable and pursuing lasting legislative change.

Please sign this petition, share Eden’s story, and help bring Eden’s Law before lawmakers.

Justice for Eden. Protection for every child. A legacy that reaches beyond one family.

#JusticeForEden #EdensLaw