On the night of March 13, 2021, a shootout inside a Tulsa, Oklahoma, apartment complex ended the life of Eric Graves, a 30-year-old Black man. Officers were first called to the St. Thomas Square Apartments, also known as the Wedgewood Apartments, near 61st and Peoria, where they found a man with a non-fatal gunshot wound to his arm. While investigating, police learned of a second victim and discovered Eric Graves deceased inside an apartment.
He had been shot multiple times, and investigators found nearly 30 shell casings at the scene.
Detectives came to believe the shooting was not random but a planned ambush stemming from a prior disagreement, which one police official described as being "mostly about a girl." The investigation quickly led to two brothers, 19-year-old Jayden Hopson and 20-year-old Gabriel Hopson. Warrants were issued for their arrest, and both were taken into custody within weeks of the shooting. Authorities alleged that the brothers had planned to attack Graves at the apartment, but that Graves had returned fire during the encounter.
The search for a third suspect took a strange turn in July 2021 when the Tulsa Police Department featured 24-year-old Lorraine Latoya Graves, a relative of the victim, as their "Weekly Most Wanted" on Facebook. She was wanted as an accessory to the murder. Shortly after the post went public, a comment appeared from Lorraine Graves's own account asking, "Where’s the reward money at?" This social media misstep helped investigators pinpoint her location, and detectives with the Fugitive Warrants Unit arrested her in north Tulsa on July 15, 2021.
The investigation did not end there. Police soon identified a fourth individual, 20-year-old Wendell Alexander, initially seeking him as a material witness. Alexander was arrested in McCurtain County in connection with a separate shooting. After his capture, Tulsa investigators said they believed he was "much more involved" in Eric Graves's death than they had first thought.
By the end of July 2021, all four suspects were in custody. Wendell Alexander and Jayden Hopson were charged with first-degree murder. Gabriel Hopson and Lorraine Graves were charged as accessories to murder. As of that month, the charges against all four individuals were pending in court, and the investigation was considered ongoing.
