A desolate highway where a teen's body was mysteriously found naked and with his teeth knocked out was almost the scene of a second tragedy days earlier.

Noah Presgrove, 19, was discovered by the side of US-81 near Terral, Oklahoma, on September 4, 2023, hours after partying all night with friends a mile away.

He suffered massive head and upper-body injuries that led him to die from internal bleeding, but the cause of those injuries remains a mystery nearly three years later.

The party, which ran over the Labor Day weekend, was hosted by Presgrove's close friends Avery Jo Combs and her sister Carter to mark Avery's 22nd birthday.

But the sisters almost didn't live to see their rural home on the Texas border be turned into a crime scene.

Just two weeks earlier, the pair were involved in a three-car crash on the same highway in which Carter was airlifted to hospital with serious injuries. 

Avery was driving her pickup truck and waiting to turn left off US-81 onto the gravel access road to their home on the night of August 13, 2023.

Suddenly, they were rear-ended by a truck and pushed into the southbound lane where the car was T-boned by a second truck, according to police reports at the time.

The intersection is about 0.8 miles south of where Presgrove's body was found, which is now marked by a roadside memorial.

Carter, who was 19 at the time, was in the passenger seat on the side that was hit by the second impact, and needed emergency treatment.

She was flown to Denton Regional Medical Center, just outside Dallas, where she was admitted in a stable condition with head and chest injuries.

Carter's aunt Josey Martin posted a photo of herself with the teenager sitting up in her hospital bed giving a thumbs up.

'She's gonna make it! Thank you everyone for checking on her,' Martin wrote.

'It was definitely scary for all involved. Carter was in and out of consciousness at the scene so she was flown from scene to hospital. 

'She is expected to make a full recovery. They said to expect some moodiness and memory issues due to the concussion. (Not sure that's any different than pre-concussion).

'Avery is stubborn and wouldn't go to hospital to be checked out.

'The five others involved were awake, alert, and walking around at the scene. I'm sure everyone of them are feeling it today though.'

Police at the time said everyone else involved in the crash suffered minor, if any, injuries and were treated locally and released.

Another family member, Sarah Long, added that the girls were waiting for oncoming traffic to pass before they turned, when the truck drove into them.

'Praise God no one was hurt more severely. Carter and Avery are banged up today but everyone is alive so that's all that matters!' she wrote.

All three vehicles were written off and photos from the crash showed the tray of Avery's pickup badly crumpled. 

Two weeks later, the isolated stretch of highway was again crowded with police and ambulances - this time for a body found on the shoulder. 

Presgrove's close pals who were still partying well into that Sunday night consistently claimed they had no idea how he died. 

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol is not investigating his death as a murder, but his family has long believed he was beaten to death and his body dumped on the road.

Presgrove's sister Maddison Rawlings even sued four of his friends and three parents for wrongful death last June.

Two of them were Carter and Avery, who were singled out as the hosts of the party and accused of creating the environment that led to his death.

'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.

They were accused of providing Presgrove with alcohol 'even after he was already intoxicated' and breaching their duty of care by doing so.

Presgrove's autopsy report found he had a blood alcohol level of 0.14.

Avery and Carter's mother, Stevie Howard, was named in the suit because she owned a trailer next to the house that was used in the party, as was the girls' grandfather, Johnnie Trout Wilcoxson, who owned the property but was not present.

Carter, now 22, welcomed a baby girl, Nobie Tate Newton, with her boyfriend Jack Newton, 21, who was Presgrove's best friend.

Jack is also named in the lawsuit and accused of providing Presgrove with the alcohol he drank the night he died.

The six-page complaint offered no evidence that Presgrove was beaten to death, let alone by anyone at the party, and none has emerged since his body was found - other than the nature of his injuries.

All the accused parties denied liability in their initial responses to the lawsuit, which is still in the discovery phase.

A rough series of events emerged over the years since his death as the case was investigated, texts were leaked, and the details intensely discussed online.

The generally accepted narrative includes Presgrove being dirty after the ATV accident and being helped to shower by Carter and another friend Jasmine Milan, because of how drunk he was.

Allegedly, Presgrove soon after argued with Avery - whom some friends claim he was romantically involved with at the time - after he asked to sleep in her bed and she refused, telling him he had to sleep on the floor.

'She told him he couldn't sleep in her bed because he messed with her friend the night before,' Newton told a friend last year.

The argument upset Presgrove, and he wandered off into the night 'to cool off', never to be seen alive again.

Newton explained in Facebook messages to a friend his own argument with Presgrove: 'We argued about girls for a second then ended up holding each other crying telling each other how much we meant to one another,' the message read.

The lawsuit added that 'at least some partygoers' realized Presgrove was gone at 3.41am.

The 3.41am timing is a reference to a selfie Milan posted to Snapchat with the caption 'well noah is missing.'

Presgrove was found at 5.43am, according to both police and the lawsuit, naked and with some of his teeth scattered around his body.

He was spotted by an Oklahoma Petroleum Allies hauler driver and Gulfmark Energy field supervisor Tyler Hardy, both of whom called 911 minutes later.

Newton claimed he happened upon the scene about 6am as he left to go fishing with his father, Caleb Newton, whom he called at 6.05am.

'I figured maybe he got a ride or something, Noah's done that before - got mad and left,' Caleb told the Daily Mail last year.

'[Presgrove] was not one you usually worry about. I wasn't really thinking about it.'

This timeline is disputed by another partygoer, Kaden Pressy, who claimed he was woken up at 5.15am by Newton bursting through the door.

'Jack Newton bursts through the door saying, "Noah is dead." Like, frantic, tearing up,' he told detectives in a leaked recording of a June 21, 2024, interview.

Pressy also claimed when he followed Newton to the body, Presgrove had black shorts on, in contrast to being naked with a pair of white shorts on the road nearby.