In late October 2016, Beth Ann Jordan, a 45-year-old Caucasian woman living on the streets of southeast Oklahoma City, was discovered gravely wounded near the intersection of Southeast 44th Street and South Stiles Avenue, having been shot in the head. She was rushed from the scene to a local hospital, where medical staff fought to stabilize her. For several days she remained alive, her condition a question mark hanging over an already fragile existence, before she ultimately succumbed to her
injuries in the hospital, turning what had first been reported as a shooting into yet another homicide for the city that year.
Beth had not been alone when the gunfire erupted. With her was 57-year-old Alexander Irvin Paton, another person experiencing homelessness, who was also shot but survived his wounds. The two of them, according to police and later news reports, were simply trying to get by in a rough corner of southeast Oklahoma City when they were confronted by armed strangers. In a city that would record dozens of homicides in 2016, their shooting was one more act of sudden violence, but the details made it especially stark: there was no bar dispute, no domestic argument, no long-running feud—just two vulnerable people in a darkened area of town.
Investigators pieced together what had happened from witness accounts and evidence at the scene. Authorities said that two men approached Beth and Paton demanding cash or valuables, treating the pair as easy targets because of where and how they lived. When the victims had nothing to give, the encounter turned lethal. Shots were fired, Beth was struck in the head, and Paton was wounded but able to survive, later becoming a living reminder of what had unfolded in those chaotic moments. Police classified the case as a homicide and began working it as a robbery-turned-shooting, a crime that underscored how quickly a simple demand for money could turn into a killing.
Months later, in February 2017, Oklahoma City police announced a major development: the arrests of 23-year-old Ernesto Gonzalez and 19-year-old Anthony David in connection with the shooting. The two were taken into custody on murder and robbery complaints, and both were booked into the Oklahoma County Jail, with reports noting that bond had not been set at the time. According to investigators’ allegations summarized in news coverage, Gonzalez and David were the men who confronted Beth and Paton, demanded money or valuables, and then opened fire when their victims had nothing to surrender.
Case-tracking organizations later marked Beth’s homicide as solved following these arrests, reflecting the view that investigators had identified and captured those responsible, even as detailed public information about the ultimate resolution of the criminal proceedings remained limited. What endures in the public record is the story of a killing that seemed to grow out of the harsh intersection of homelessness and street-level predation: a brief confrontation over money in a forgotten corner of the city that ended with Beth losing her life, Paton scarred but alive, and two young men facing the most serious charges the law can bring.
