On a February night in 2018, 31-year-old Troy Jamel Smith, a Black / African American man from Tulsa, Oklahoma, left his home at the Edenwood Apartments, telling his girlfriend he was going to visit his mother across town. It was February 17, and by the time that night was over his death would be counted as the city’s fifth homicide of the year, another act of sudden violence in a community already on edge.
Surveillance cameras at the Edenwood complex later showed him walking away alone around 8 to 8:30 p.m., drifting out into the cold night toward a destination that did not match the plan he had shared at home. Instead of heading west toward his mother’s house, he was seen going north, in the direction of the nearby Town Square Apartments. Security staff there remembered a man fitting his description leaving the area sometime around 10:15 to 10:30 p.m. Not long after that, people living near the intersection of North Quincy Avenue and East Young Street heard a burst of gunfire echo through their neighborhood, a series of shots that sent them to their windows and doors to see what had happened.
When the sirens arrived and the flashing lights washed over the pavement, officers found Smith lying in the middle of the street at that intersection. Shell casings were scattered nearby, but there was no wallet, no phone, and no obvious sign that he had been robbed. The medical examiner later determined that he had been killed by a gunshot wound to the back of the head, struck by a 9 mm round that ended his life where he fell. The image stayed with those who saw it: a man who had started the evening at home, now alone on the asphalt, his last steps traced only by bits of physical evidence and the faint record of security cameras.
Detectives spent the following day back at the scene, walking the neighborhood and knocking on doors, searching for video from homes and businesses that might have captured his final movements. In their public comments they spoke of the darker currents that might have pulled him into danger, noting that he was known to associate with a local gang and that PCP was described as his drug of choice. Neighbors, like one woman who had been at home with her family when the shots rang out, described the fear that swept through the block as they realized someone had been killed just outside. For many living there, the sight of yet another body in the street felt like proof that the violence they heard about on the news was pressing closer and closer to their own front doors.
Four days after the shooting, on February 21, the investigation took a decisive turn. During a traffic stop, officers pulled over a vehicle and arrested two men—39-year-old Larry Collins and 40-year-old William Johnson—after discovering a gun in their possession. As detectives continued to piece together what had happened to Smith, they developed Collins and Johnson as suspects in the killing. Before long, police announced that Collins had been arrested on a complaint of first-degree murder and Johnson on a complaint of accessory to murder, tying both men publicly to the death that had shaken the North Tulsa neighborhood.
The case moved into the courts under Tulsa County District Court case number CF-2018-1317, with prosecutors formally charging Collins with first-degree murder and several firearm-related offenses. Court records state that the state of Oklahoma alleged he shot and killed Smith on February 17, 2018, with a bullet to the back of the head. Johnson, meanwhile, faced counts of accessory to murder and possession of a firearm after former conviction of a felony, but those charges were later dismissed at the request of the state in September 2018. In September 2019, after hearing the evidence, a jury found Collins guilty of first-degree murder and recommended a sentence of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole, a punishment the court imposed. In public records and memorial pages, Smith is now remembered simply as another life lost to gunfire in Tulsa that year—sometimes affectionately referred to by the nickname “Tee Roy”—while the man held legally responsible for his death serves out his sentence behind prison walls.
