Marlo Goodman, a 20-year-old Black/African American man from Oklahoma City, stepped into the cold early-morning hours of February 17, 2019 near Northwest 23rd Street and Villa/Billen Avenue, in a commercial strip that included Session Hookah Lounge and nearby apartments. The spot was a familiar late-night gathering place where music and conversation often spilled into the parking lot long after midnight, a social hub on the northwest side of the city.
In those dark hours, though, the usual hum of nightlife gave way to something sharper and more dangerous as tensions among people in the area rose toward violence.
Around 2:30 a.m., multiple people began firing weapons near the apartment complex and businesses along the corner. Residents and patrons heard the rapid crack of gunfire, echoing down NW 23rd, and calls to 911 brought Oklahoma City police racing toward the scene. When officers arrived, they found chaos in the parking area: shell casings scattered on the pavement, vehicles left at odd angles, and two people down. One of them was Marlo, mortally wounded by gunfire. The other, a man in his thirties, was still alive and was rushed to a nearby hospital with at least one gunshot wound.
Despite efforts to save him, Marlo died there, his life ending just feet from the nightlife that had drawn people out that night. Police later confirmed that he had been killed in the shootout and that the second victim, who survived, was treated and eventually released from the hospital. Early reports from investigators painted a picture of a brief, chaotic exchange of gunfire involving several individuals, but no clear narrative about what sparked it. Detectives could say that multiple people had been shooting at each other in the parking lot, yet in the immediate aftermath they were unable to explain what dispute or feud had erupted into deadly violence, and they initially announced that no arrests had been made.
As news of the shooting spread, Marlo’s name began to appear on memorial pages dedicated to victims of gun violence. Online, candles were lit in his memory and a funeral fundraiser was launched by family, who referred to him by a familiar nickname and invited others to remember him. On one tribute page, people who knew him added small details—marking him as funny and outgoing, recalling everyday moments that now felt irreplaceable. Those fragments of remembrance turned the brief description “20-year-old killed in a shootout” into something more human, anchoring the headlines to a young man who had gone to school in the city and moved through the same neighborhoods as the people now mourning him.
Behind the scenes, detectives kept working the case. They collected evidence from the parking lot, interviewed witnesses who had heard or seen parts of the exchange, and traced leads that stretched beyond that February night. In later years, case summaries compiled by crime databases reported that the investigation eventually led to the arrest of two suspects in connection with Marlo’s killing. One of those arrests, involving a 23-year-old suspect taken into custody on March 22, 2019, was singled out as a key development, marking the shift from an open, unsolved file to a case with identified alleged shooters. Publicly available summaries, however, stop short of providing a full courtroom narrative—details such as the suspects’ names, the exact charges filed, and the final outcomes of any prosecutions are not widely reported in open sources.
What remains clear in the record is the outline of that night: a lively corridor on NW 23rd, a burst of gunfire in the small hours of the morning, and a young man left lifeless on the pavement as officers’ flashing lights washed over the scene. The surviving victim’s release from the hospital, the later arrests, and the slow, procedural work of the justice system all unfolded in the shadow of that moment. For Marlo’s family and the people who continue to light candles for him online, the official reports and case summaries are only part of the story; the rest lives in their memories of who he was before the gunfire on February 17, 2019, and in the unanswered questions that linger about why the confrontation turned deadly in the first place.
