Christopher Gilliam, a 29-year-old male from Dewey, Oklahoma, was killed on the night of February 13, 2020, in what authorities later described as a murder-suicide inside a modest home near 12th Street and North Osage Avenue. That day had already been tense: Dewey police and Washington County deputies had come to the residence to serve a protective order on 25-year-old Tyler Gage, the estranged husband of the woman who lived there.
Forced by the order to leave the home, Gage left under law enforcement supervision, but the sense of safety it briefly brought would prove tragically short-lived.
In the hours after the protective order was served, neighbors recalled seeing normal comings and goings at the house, including the arrival of Gilliam, whom they understood to be the woman’s ex-husband. Inside the house that evening were the woman and four children, a blended family caught in the middle of a long-running, volatile conflict between her current and former partners. Witnesses later described hearing sudden gunshots that shattered the quiet of the neighborhood. Rushing outside, they saw the chaos that followed, with distraught children being led from the home and officers converging on the scene. One neighbor would later say they had never seen so much blood, a detail that underscored just how violent and shocking the episode was for a community unaccustomed to such scenes.
Investigators from the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation pieced together a stark narrative. After being removed from the house earlier that day, Tyler Gage allegedly returned with a firearm, forced his way back into the residence, and confronted those inside. In that confrontation, he shot Christopher Gilliam, fatally wounding him, and then turned the gun on himself. Gilliam was pronounced dead at the scene, while Gage was transported in critical condition to a hospital in Tulsa, where he died the following day. The woman and all four children, though witnesses to the horror, were physically unharmed. For law enforcement, the sequence of events and the self-inflicted gunshot wound to Gage led them to classify the case as a murder-suicide rather than an ongoing homicide investigation.
Behind the immediate violence lay a pattern of domestic turmoil. The protective order served earlier that day had been sought by the woman, who told authorities that Gage had recently become abusive, alleging that he had hit and choked her and threatened to burn down the house. Neighbors later said they believed the fatal shooting grew out of a jealous feud between the husband and ex-husband over the woman and the life she was trying to build without Gage. In the aftermath, residents of Dewey, a town where serious violent crime is rare, grappled with the emotional fallout, especially for the children who saw the events unfold. Community members expressed anger at the senselessness of the killings and sorrow for the young lives suddenly left without one of the central adults in their world. With Gage identified as the sole assailant and deceased, there were no arrests in connection with Gilliam’s death, and authorities have not named any other suspects, effectively closing the case as a completed murder by Gage followed by his own suicide.
