Law enforcement found Myron Cooper miles from the hotel parking lot where investigators say his fatal encounter with Berry Russell Jr. occurred.
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — Myron Cooper’s final movements became the first visible clue in a homicide investigation that police ultimately traced several miles across Oklahoma City, from the place where the wounded 43-year-old sought help to a hotel parking lot where investigators say he had fought with Berry Russell Jr.
Officers were initially directed to the area of Southeast 15th Street and Interstate 35 around 11:30 p.m., where Cooper reported that he had been shot. He was critically wounded but had not remained where the gunfire occurred. Police Sgt. Dillon Quirk later said Cooper had gotten into a vehicle, driven along the highway and stopped at multiple locations before ending up near the interstate. Oklahoma City Free Press reported that the original confrontation occurred roughly seven miles away in a parking lot on North Santa Fe Avenue. That geographical gap shaped the early investigation: police had a badly wounded man in south Oklahoma City and had to determine where, why and by whom he had been shot.
Cooper was taken to a hospital in critical condition and underwent surgery. He died the following morning, police said. His death transformed the shooting investigation into a homicide case and focused attention on what detectives learned about the hours before he called for help. The Oklahoma City Police Department identified Russell, 54, as the other man involved in the earlier altercation and said officers located him shortly after Cooper was transported. Russell was interviewed and booked into the Oklahoma County Detention Center on a murder complaint. Later reporting described him as facing a first-degree murder accusation and said his bond had been set at $10 million.
Detectives traced the confrontation to 6101 N. Santa Fe Ave., the address identified in the police bulletin. Reporting by Law&Crime, relying on court documents obtained by KFOR, placed the events at the Broadway Inn & Suites OKC and its Sunni B’s Sports Bar and Grill. The circumstances that preceded the violence emerged through a combination of police statements, Russell’s reported account and a Facebook Live video. The video reportedly showed Russell interacting with Cooper’s wife inside the bar. Court-document reporting described the interaction as flirting and said Russell whispered into the woman’s ear. The available account does not establish what words were exchanged during that moment.
Cooper saw the interaction and confronted Russell, authorities said. The dispute moved into the parking lot and became physical. Police said that first altercation was eventually broken up. At that point, the story could have ended with the men separated. Instead, investigators say a series of decisions during the interval before their second encounter became central to the murder case. Russell told police he returned to the bar and waited because he wanted Cooper to leave before he went back to his own vehicle, according to the court-document account. His statement presents the pause as an effort to avoid renewed conflict.
During that same period, however, Russell contacted his wife. According to reporting on the court documents, Russell told her to “come right.” Investigators interpreted that phrase as a request that she bring him a gun, and police said she did so. The reported delivery of the weapon changes the significance of the quiet period between the two confrontations. Rather than simply marking time between fights, it is a period investigators examined for evidence about what Russell anticipated and intended. Publicly accessible reporting does not establish the wife as charged with a crime in connection with the case, and no unsupported allegation about her legal responsibility should be drawn from the reported delivery.
Russell then believed Cooper had left and began walking toward his vehicle, according to his statement as reported from the court records. Police say Cooper instead pulled up near Russell’s car. Russell told investigators that he ran back toward the bar and that Cooper chased him, catching him and striking him repeatedly in the back of the head. Russell said he then pulled the pistol from his pocket and shot Cooper in the chest. That account is important because it places the fatal shot inside a second physical confrontation rather than portraying it as a continuation of the first fight without interruption. It is also Russell’s account, not a judicial finding, and the available records do not show that a court has accepted or rejected his description.
Cooper’s actions after the gunfire provide a separate, less disputed part of the sequence. Quirk told KOKH that Cooper entered a vehicle and drove away, making stops along the highway. Calls were placed to police from different locations as others sought help for him, Quirk said. Cooper ultimately reached Southeast 15th Street and Interstate 35 before he was taken to the hospital. The official police bulletin states that Cooper himself indicated he had been shot when police were called. Free Press initially noted that police had not publicly explained whether Cooper drove himself from the shooting scene, while KOKH later quoted Quirk saying that he did. The later police statement provides the more specific account.
The city’s public notice contains an internal timing conflict. It was issued during the afternoon of July 24 and says in its narrative that officers had been called “last night,” a description consistent with media reports placing the shooting late July 23. Yet the incident field on the same notice lists July 24 at 11:32 p.m., several hours after the bulletin was published. KFOR, Law&Crime and Oklahoma City Free Press all placed the confrontation on July 23, with Cooper dying after surgery the next morning. The reason for the conflicting field in the municipal notice has not been publicly explained in the material reviewed for this report.
Police described Cooper’s death as one of Oklahoma City’s homicides for the year and said the confrontation appeared isolated. KOKH reported that his killing came during a cluster of deadly incidents, including other fatal shootings within a five-day span. The immediate homicide count became part of the first-day coverage, but the central questions in Cooper’s case remained narrow and personal: what happened between the two men, what role the weapon delivery played, and whether the circumstances Russell described before he fired are supported by other evidence. The broad citywide violence statistics cannot answer any of those case-specific questions.
Russell was located soon after the shooting rather than after an extended search, according to police. The city’s bulletin said he was interviewed and booked on a murder complaint. Law&Crime reported several days later that he stood accused of first-degree murder and was being detained on $10 million bond. Those descriptions represent the procedural information publicly reported at the time. An arrest, complaint or criminal charge is not proof of guilt, and the materials reviewed for this article do not provide a complete current docket establishing a conviction, dismissal or other final resolution.
The case resurfaced publicly in August when The Black Chronicle promoted an exclusive interview with Russell. The Aug. 20 article’s headline attributes to him the statement, “I Did Not Want to Kill That Man.” Only a short introduction to the interview is freely accessible, and the remainder is behind a subscription wall. The inaccessible portions are not being paraphrased or treated as evidence here. The limited public page does show that Russell has spoken to a local publication since his arrest, but it does not by itself establish the details of his defense or alter the allegations reported by police.
More than the barroom interaction that preceded it, the case is defined by the distance Cooper covered after he was wounded and by the sequence detectives reconstructed behind that journey. He was shot on the north side, traveled south, contacted authorities and underwent emergency surgery before dying. Police then connected his condition to an earlier fight and arrested Russell. The remaining disputes concern the meaning of the events before the shot was fired. No publicly accessible source reviewed through Aug. 30 establishes a final court determination of those disputed facts.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.