Jose Sergio Montes De La Cueva, also identified in case records as Jose Delacueva, a 37-year-old Hispanic/Latino male, was inside a North Tulsa home on the night of September 23, 2010, when the quiet of the house was shattered by armed intruders. The residence, located in the 2100 block of East Tecumseh Street, became the target of a violent home invasion carried out by a small group of men who had come looking specifically for him.
According to later summaries of the case, the men were not random burglars; they entered with a purpose and a name, turning an ordinary evening into the beginning of a tragedy that would remain unresolved for years.
Three or four men, all armed with handguns, slipped into the home through a side door and quickly took control of the scene. Once inside, they began forcing the occupants to the floor, demanding to know where “Jose Montes De La Cueva” was. Their search through the house ended when they found him and separated him from the others. He was taken to another room, away from the witnesses lying on the floor. Moments later, those witnesses reported hearing a single gunshot from that room. When the intruders emerged, Jose had been shot in the head, and the attackers were still not finished with the terror they intended to inflict.
Before leaving, the gunmen forced two other people from the house into their vehicle and drove away from the scene. During that drive, the captives were beaten and roughed up, then pushed out of the car about a mile from the home. One of them managed to make it to a nearby convenience store, where he sought help and reported that he had been pistol-whipped and that his friend had been shot at a residence on East Tecumseh Street. Police officers followed that lead back to 2127 East Tecumseh, where they found Jose critically wounded from a gunshot to the head. He was rushed to the hospital, but despite medical efforts he died several days later, on September 28, 2010, his injuries proving fatal after a brief struggle for life.
Detectives with the Tulsa Police Department opened a homicide investigation, treating the case as a targeted home invasion rather than a random act of violence. In the course of their work, they identified a person of interest, a man named Gabriel Nathan Smith, who was questioned about his possible connection to the shooting. After being interviewed, however, he was released, and no charges were filed against him. Public case summaries note that authorities continued to search for the group of gunmen responsible, but no one was ever arrested or formally charged in connection with Jose's killing. Years later, the case is still described as an unsolved or unresolved homicide, with investigators and case-tracking sites appealing for new information that might finally explain who stormed that house on Tecumseh Street and why they came for Jose that night.
