Saira Mariosol Vasquez was a 30-year-old Hispanic woman working inside Bienvenidos Bar 7 De Copas on the night her life was taken, in the early hours of October 10, 2016, in north Tulsa, Oklahoma. The neighborhood bar sat near North Lewis Avenue and East Haskell Place, a familiar gathering spot where regulars came to drink, talk, and unwind after long days.
That Monday had slipped past midnight into the quiet stretch of early morning when only a handful of patrons remained, and Saira was there with 23-year-old Adan Duran, who also helped manage the bar.
In those late hours, a male customer had been lingering for some time, drinking and focusing his attention on the bartender, a woman who was a relative of the victims. According to investigators, he began making persistent, unwanted advances toward her, ignoring clear signs that his interest was not returned. The mood inside the bar shifted from casual to tense as his behavior continued. When it became apparent that the bartender wanted nothing to do with him, Saira stepped in, supported by Adan, and they told the man to leave the premises. What should have been a routine act of protecting a co-worker and maintaining order inside the bar instead became the spark for something far more sinister.
The man did leave, but only briefly. Police later said he walked out to a vehicle, retrieved a pistol, and then came back inside. In that small bar, where the jukebox and conversation should have been the loudest sounds, the confrontation escalated into sudden violence. He confronted Saira and Adan and opened fire, shooting them multiple times. The bartender, realizing what was happening, hid as the gunman unleashed the attack and then fled into the night. Around 1 a.m., officers were called to Bienvenidos Bar 7 De Copas; when they arrived, they found a man and a woman dead from gunshot wounds, later identified as Saira and Adan. The double homicide was recorded by Tulsa police as part of a growing tally of killings that year and immediately drew the attention of homicide detectives, who sealed off the front of the bar and began piecing together what had happened.
In the hours after the shooting, detectives interviewed witnesses and even took at least one person from inside the bar downtown for questioning, but no one was arrested that first day. The case moved quickly from a chaotic crime scene to a manhunt as investigators gathered statements describing a patron who had been inside the bar for hours before the shooting, intent on leaving with the bartender. The story that emerged was one of a chilling retaliation: a man whose bruised pride and rejection turned into lethal rage directed at the two people who had simply insisted that he go. The community around North Lewis Avenue was left stunned as word spread that two people known for working at the local bar had been killed in the very place they helped run.
Months later, in January 2017, Tulsa police publicly named their suspect. An arrest warrant was issued for 33-year-old Rigoberto Pureco on two counts of first-degree murder. Authorities said Pureco was the man who had spent hours in the bar that night, hoping to leave with the bartender, and that after being asked to leave by Saira and Adan, he allegedly went to his vehicle, armed himself with a pistol, and returned to shoot them both. Police emphasized that he had been at the bar specifically with the intention of pursuing the bartender and that the double homicide was the brutal culmination of that rejected pursuit.
Despite the warrant and the detailed account witnesses provided, the story did not end with an arrest. Years after the shooting, case summaries still describe the warrant for Pureco and note that he remains at large, with investigators urging anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact Crime Stoppers or the Tulsa Police Department's homicide tip line. For Saira's family, for Adan's loved ones, and for the community that once treated Bienvenidos Bar 7 De Copas as a familiar refuge, the double murder stands as a lingering wound: a night when an ordinary shift at a neighborhood bar turned into irreversible loss, and a suspect named in court records has yet to be brought into custody to answer for what happened there.
