Fredrick Derbigny

On July 6, 2010, 27-year-old Fredrick Derbigny, an African-American man from Oklahoma City, was shot and killed during a violent incident that abruptly ended the rhythm of an ordinary summer day. Police recorded his death as a homicide, noting that he had been found in the city where he lived and that his life had been taken by gunfire, the kind of sudden, irrevocable violence that leaves few answers in its wake.

In the hours and days that followed, detectives worked to reconstruct what ...