Justin Clark, a 23-year-old African-American man from Oklahoma City, was born on March 30, 1993, to Telana Nero and Timothy Lamarr Clark and grew up in the city whose streets he knew since childhood. He attended Telstar Elementary School and later enrolled at Guthrie Job Corps, where he learned plumbing, before deciding to pursue a path focused on healing and care.
In young adulthood he studied at Heritage College, earning his massage therapy certification and beginning work in that field, with his name later listed online as a massage therapist and Heritage College graduate, a small but concrete sign of the future he was building for himself.
By the fall of 2016, Justin was in the middle of that transition into his profession, moving from training into practice in the same city where he had been born. On the night of November 16 into the early hours of November 17, he went out to a venue in northwest Oklahoma City near Northwest 59th Street and North May Avenue, a commercial strip anchored by a club and a Best Buy store that shared surrounding parking lots. Different news accounts would later describe the location slightly differently—some emphasizing the club’s parking lot, others the large store next door—but all agreed that the setting was that busy cluster of businesses near 59th and May where people gathered late into the night.
Inside the venue, an argument began that drew Justin into the center of a conflict he could not have anticipated. According to a later case summary compiled from police reports and local coverage, the disagreement started inside but did not cool off when people stepped outside. Instead, it spilled into the night air and the parking lot near Northwest 59th and May, where cars were scattered under the lights and the party atmosphere gave way to raised voices and escalating tension.
Amid that argument, a green Chevrolet Impala with large rims became the focus of witnesses’ attention. Investigators later described how a man got out of that car in the parking lot, producing a gun and opening fire. Shots cracked across the asphalt, and Justin was struck and fatally wounded as the confrontation turned in an instant from a dispute to a killing. The gunman climbed back into the Impala, and the car sped away from the scene, leaving Justin lying in the lot as the chaos of moments before dissolved into shock and horror.
Police officers were called shortly after 1:30 a.m. on November 17, 2016, and arrived to find Justin with no signs of life in the parking area near Northwest 59th Street and North May Avenue. He was pronounced dead there, with officials quickly determining that he had been shot to death and classifying the case as a homicide. The killing was recorded as the 65th homicide investigation of 2016 for the Oklahoma City Police Department, a grim milestone in a year that had already seen far too many families shattered by violence.
In the immediate aftermath, detectives said that both the shooter and the driver of the green Chevy Impala had fled before officers arrived, and they asked anyone who had seen the car or the confrontation to come forward. Local reports described the vehicle in detail—including its green color and oversized rims—as officers canvassed the area and pieced together how an argument at a nightlife spot had ended with a young man dead in a parking lot. For some time, public accounts focused on the search for the occupants of that Impala, reflecting the urgency investigators felt in trying to track down those responsible.
Subsequent coverage from Oklahoma City news outlets identified a suspect: Maurice Maxwell, who was arrested and booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on a count of first-degree murder in connection with Justin’s killing. The same report that confirmed Justin’s death at the scene near Northwest 59th and May also named Maxwell as the man taken into custody, tying a face and a charge to the previously anonymous gunman described in earlier accounts. Publicly available sources do not detail the final outcome of those criminal proceedings, but they make clear that at least one suspect was arrested and jailed on a murder complaint. None of the reports accessed name or describe any second suspect by identity, and there is no clear indication in those records that the person believed to have been driving the Impala was ever publicly identified.
In the years since, Justin’s name has continued to appear in online memorials and databases devoted to victims of violence. A homicide record lists him as a male victim of “death by force” in Oklahoma City, noting his race and age and the date he was found, while forums linked to that entry show people discussing his case and expressing frustration that such tragedies occur at all. On a national gun violence memorial site, his page records that he was lost to gunfire in Oklahoma City on November 17, 2016, with his occupation marked as massage therapist and his school as Heritage College, and dozens of virtual candles have been lit in his memory by people who refuse to let his story fade into a statistic.
