Monica Valdez, a 33-year-old Hispanic woman from Oklahoma City, was spending the early hours of April 1, 2017 at a small house on North Woodward Avenue in the city’s northwest side when an ordinary gathering turned suddenly and irreversibly violent. It was still dark when neighbors near Northwest 10th Street and May Avenue noticed a handful of people outside and heard raised voices cutting through the quiet of the morning.
Moments later, they reported hearing a burst of gunfire — just a few loud shots — followed by the chaos of sirens and flashing lights as police cars and ambulances poured into the neighborhood. Inside and around the home, officers found a scene that would later be described as one of the city’s early homicides that year: five people shot, one of them already beyond saving.
When officers reached the 1200 block of North Woodward around 5:30 a.m., they discovered Monica among the victims and pronounced her dead at the scene, while four others were rushed to area hospitals. Another victim, 22-year-old Wendy Cortez-Paiz, was in critical condition and clung to life for several days before dying from her injuries, turning the shooting into a double homicide. The remaining three victims were treated for their wounds and eventually released, leaving behind the lingering trauma of a night that began as a gathering among acquaintances and ended as a mass shooting recognized by national gun-violence trackers. Online memorials would later note how Monica’s death rippled through her family, describing her in brief but heartfelt tributes as a stepmother with children who were left to navigate their grief in the aftermath.
According to homicide investigators, everyone involved in the shooting had been at the home together before a fight broke out inside. What began as an argument escalated until, police say, one of the people there, 28-year-old Jessica Madbull, armed herself with a gun and opened fire on the others. The gunshots shattered the pre-dawn stillness, sending injured victims scrambling for help and drawing neighbors out to the sight of patrol cars crowding the street. Detectives later pieced together that there was no unknown assailant slipping away into the dark; the suspected shooter had been part of the same small circle gathered at the residence that night.
Madbull was arrested at the scene and taken into custody as officers secured the house and surrounding area, collecting shell casings and interviewing shaken witnesses. She was booked into the Oklahoma County jail on murder charges tied to the gunfire that killed Monica and, ultimately, Wendy, and Associated Press reporting at the time noted that she was being held without bond. Police and local news outlets emphasized that the case remained under active investigation, with detectives continuing to interview witnesses and urging anyone with additional information to contact the homicide tip line. No other suspects were publicly identified, and authorities consistently described Madbull as the person believed to have fired the shots that turned a small northwest Oklahoma City home into the center of a deadly crime scene. In official tallies, the killings were counted among Oklahoma City’s early homicides of 2017, while on memorial pages and remembrance sites, Monica’s name and photograph were added to the long list of lives lost to gun violence, her story preserved in a few lines of text and the memories of those who knew her.
