Zaaric Davis, a 5-month-old African-American male infant from the Oklahoma City area, spent his short life with his family in a northwest-side apartment complex on Lyrewood Lane, part of the Putnam Green Apartments. He was born on February 1, 2016, and records later placed his death on July 16, 2016, with Bethany, Oklahoma listed as the location, reflecting how closely the neighboring communities of Bethany and northwest Oklahoma City are intertwined.
On July 15, 2016, the day everything changed, Zaaric was at home with his family in their apartment. According to information later summarized in case records, his father, Zhaquille Davis, fed the baby and then laid him down for a nap. It was a routine gesture any parent might make, the kind of ordinary moment that usually passes without notice. But when Zhaquille went back to check on his son roughly ten minutes later, he found that the baby was no longer breathing. Emergency services were called immediately, and paramedics rushed into the apartment, beginning CPR in an effort to pull the tiny child back from the edge. From there, Zaaric was transported to Integris Baptist hospital in Oklahoma City, where despite the medical team’s efforts he was pronounced dead the following day.
News of the baby’s death rippled through the apartment complex and the wider neighborhood. Residents later described being stunned that the infant who had lived just down the walkway in one of the units could have died under circumstances that would soon be labeled a homicide. Police and paramedics had been called to the family’s apartment on Lyrewood Lane on July 15, and neighbors watched as first responders worked over the child, then hurried him away to the hospital. In the days that followed, the Oklahoma City Police Department opened an investigation, and after medical examination, authorities announced that the death of the 5-month-old had been officially ruled a homicide. At the time, officers described the case as particularly difficult, noting that many of the detectives working it were parents themselves.
As the investigation deepened, the family’s apartment and the surrounding complex became a focus of law enforcement activity. Reports placed the incident at the Putnam Green Apartments on Lyrewood Lane, a community of modest buildings and families, where two other young children were also living in the home at the time of the emergency call. Out of caution, authorities removed the surviving children from the residence while detectives worked to understand what had happened during that brief window between the time Zaaric was laid down to sleep and the moment he was found unresponsive. Public case summaries later categorized his death as “death by force,” underscoring that investigators believed an act of violence, rather than illness or accident, lay behind the medical findings that led to the homicide ruling.
In the immediate aftermath, police told reporters that neither of Zaaric’s parents had been arrested or charged, even as detectives continued to treat the case as an active homicide investigation. Over the years that followed, the case gradually shifted from breaking news to a quiet entry in online homicide databases, where it remains listed with his name, dates, and the stark notation that his death was the result of force. Those databases, updated as recently as 2025, do not record any arrest or publicly identified suspect in connection with his killing. Taken together with the absence of later news reports announcing charges, this strongly suggests that no one has ever been formally charged with causing Zaaric Davis’s death, leaving his case unresolved and his family and community without the closure that an arrest and prosecution might have brought.
