Anthony Alexander was a 38-year-old African-American/Black man living in Oklahoma City when, in the early hours of July 3, 2016, a domestic disturbance at a small home on Southwest 49th Street turned suddenly fatal. Public case summaries describe his death as a “death by force,” noting that officers were called to reports of a shooting and arrived to find him suffering from gunshot wounds; he was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
Just after 1 a.m., police were dispatched to a house in the 3300 block of Southwest 49th Street for a disturbance. As officers reached the scene, they heard shots coming from the home. Inside or at the residence, they found Alexander gravely wounded; he died there rather than at a hospital. Witness accounts later painted a chaotic scene. A neighbor, Jessica Lancaster, recalled hearing a woman scream, her husband rushing to the front of their house, and seeing a young woman in the yard, frantic and screaming as patrol cars converged on Southwest 49th. Another summary based on contemporaneous reporting describes the woman Alexander had been arguing with running out into the front yard, yelling for help in panic, just before or as the shooting unfolded.
Investigators determined that the trouble had started as a heated altercation between Alexander and a woman inside the home. During that confrontation, a second man, later identified as 20-year-old Zimmerick Britton, stepped between them. According to police and later news reports, Alexander and Britton struggled over a gun; in the course of that struggle the weapon discharged, and the shot that was fired fatally wounded Alexander. A crowdsourced property record, citing original newspaper coverage, notes that Britton was held at the scene by police as the person believed to have fired the shot, while officers secured the house and began piecing together what had happened in those brief, violent moments after 1:19 a.m. at 3304 SW 49th Street.
In the immediate aftermath, however, authorities were cautious about treating the shooting as a straightforward criminal case. Local news reported that, as of July 5, police had not made a formal arrest in connection with Alexander’s killing. Instead, they announced that the evidence collected at the scene and through witness interviews would be turned over to the Oklahoma County district attorney, who would decide whether any charges against Britton or anyone else were appropriate. A later case summary characterizes the incident as part of a broader “violent crime spree” in the Oklahoma City metro area, involving multiple suspects linked to other violent acts, though it does not publicly spell out all of those related offenses or name additional suspects beyond Britton. On crime-tracking databases, Alexander’s death still appears as an unresolved “death by force,” accompanied by open calls for anyone with information to come forward, underscoring how many questions about responsibility, motive, and ultimate accountability in his killing remain unanswered in the public record.
