Erykah Harris, 27, a Black woman, was found dead from gunshot wounds inside an East Oakland apartment on July 22, 2025. Oakland police had first responded to reports of gunfire at the Seminary Avenue building hours earlier, left when no victims were found, and returned around daybreak to discover Harris and a man fatally shot inside the unit. Neighbors reported a burst of shots in the middle of the night; officers ultimately located the bodies at about 6:45 a.m.
near Seminary and Avenal avenues, a block where investigators spent the morning processing the scene.
In the immediate aftermath, authorities withheld the victims’ identities as detectives canvassed the building and interviewed witnesses. By the following days, the case shifted from a question of whether the deaths were a double homicide or murder-suicide to a definitive conclusion by homicide investigators: the man had killed Harris and then died by suicide inside his East Oakland apartment. That determination, based on evidence recovered at the scene and other information developed by investigators, indicated there was no outstanding assailant connected to Harris’s death.
Police had also received a ShotSpotter alert about gunfire on the 2400 block of Seminary Avenue early that morning, part of the timeline that drew officers back to the neighborhood where the apartment sits. With both victims pronounced dead at the scene and the subsequent finding of murder-suicide, the investigation did not lead to arrests, and detectives did not name additional suspects. Officials urged anyone with information or relevant video to contact the Oakland Police Department’s homicide section or tip line, but no further public developments were announced regarding charges or fugitives in the case.
