Oscar Matthew Marquez Jr., a 34-year-old Black man, was fatally wounded during an eruption of gunfire in downtown Des Moines during the early morning hours of September 15, 2024. The shooting occurred shortly after the bars in the Court Avenue Entertainment District were closing, transforming a busy nightlife area near Court Avenue and Water Street into the scene of a deadly confrontation.
At approximately 2:06 a.m., Des Moines police officers assigned to foot patrol in the entertainment
district heard gunshots coming from the area. The officers immediately ran toward the sound and found three people suffering from gunshot wounds in the 200 block of Water Street. Dennis Morris Hawkins Jr. was pronounced dead at the scene. Marquez and another person were still alive but critically injured, and Des Moines Fire Department medics rushed both of them to local hospitals.
Despite receiving emergency medical treatment, Marquez died from his injuries. The other wounded person was eventually released from the hospital and continued recovering at home. Police did not publicly identify that individual, limiting what became known about his role in the confrontation or the injuries he suffered.
Investigators recovered three firearms from the shooting scene. Witness accounts and the physical evidence led detectives to conclude that a verbal dispute involving the three men had escalated into an exchange of gunfire. Authorities said they found no indication that anyone outside the group had participated in the shooting. Police did not immediately determine whether the men knew one another before the confrontation, and the reason the argument began was not publicly disclosed.
Because investigators believed the gunfire had been exchanged among the three people who were shot, police announced that there were no outstanding suspects believed to be threatening the public. However, officials did not publicly specify which firearm was connected to each person, who fired first, or which gunman was responsible for the fatal wounds suffered by Marquez and Hawkins. Those unanswered questions were left to forensic testing, witness interviews and the continuing examination of evidence.
No arrest was announced in connection with Marquez’s death, and the surviving participant was not publicly charged with murder, manslaughter or another offense arising from the shooting. There were also no publicly reported court proceedings, trials or convictions tied specifically to the deaths of Marquez and Hawkins. The available information indicates that police treated the incident as a confrontation confined to the three men rather than a shooting committed by an unidentified attacker who escaped the area.
Marquez’s death became one of Des Moines’ homicides recorded during 2024, while Hawkins’ death was counted separately. The incident left two people dead, another wounded and investigators attempting to reconstruct a brief but lethal encounter from firearms, witness statements and evidence gathered along Water Street. Although police described the circumstances surrounding the violence, the precise sequence of shots and individual responsibility for each death were not publicly resolved through an arrest or criminal conviction.
