Garrett Cooper, a 46-year-old man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, was killed by gunfire on March 15, 2023, in an incident that would not fully come to light until days later. His death was later recorded as a gun violence homicide in the city where he lived, the bare fact of his age and the date of the shooting standing in stark contrast to how long he lay unseen.
On Sunday afternoon, March 19, officers were dispatched to check on a report of a body behind a business at 6744 South Lewis Avenue, a stretch of commercial property near 71st and Lewis in south Tulsa. When they walked behind the building, they found Cooper lying dead, the cause immediately apparent: he had been shot. Police described him as having died from gunshot wounds there behind the business, an isolated scene partly hidden from public view. Investigators would later determine that the shooting itself had taken place days earlier, around 7 p.m. on March 15, leaving his body undiscovered until that Sunday call brought officers to the area.
As homicide detectives began piecing together Cooper’s final days, their attention quickly turned to people in his personal orbit. During the investigation they identified 6744 South Lewis not just as the grim discovery site but as the place where their suspect had confronted Cooper before fleeing. Leads and interviews ultimately pointed them toward 42-year-old Steven Lee Gillis, who, according to later summaries of the case, acknowledged to police that he had shot Cooper. Accounts connected to the investigation describe Gillis telling officers that there had been “previous drama” between Cooper and Gillis’ girlfriend, Ashley Abel, suggesting an ongoing tension rooted in a complicated relationship history. Other reports tied that tension even more directly to the crime, describing Cooper as Abel’s ex, a detail that framed the killing as emerging from a volatile interpersonal triangle rather than a random act.
Detectives located Gillis and brought him to the detective division, where he was questioned and then arrested in connection with Cooper’s death. Around the same time, they found Ashley Abel and brought her in as well; police reported that she was being arrested on an accessory charge, indicating that investigators believed she had a role in the events surrounding the shooting, even if she was not accused of pulling the trigger herself. Subsequent summaries of the case note that both Gillis and Abel were charged in relation to the killing, reflecting law enforcement’s view that responsibility for Cooper’s death extended beyond the gunman alone. Authorities also made clear that, after these arrests, they were not looking for anyone else, stating that no additional suspects were being sought at that time. With those decisions, the investigation into the killing behind the south Tulsa business narrowed to the small, fraught circle of Cooper, his former partner, and the man police say shot him.
