Jalen Jawun Ware, a 23-year-old Black/African American male from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, had just reached the age where the future starts to feel real and within reach. Born on July 11, 1992, he grew up rooted in the city where his life would also tragically end, surrounded by family who knew him not as a headline but as a son, father and friend. Online memorials describe a young man remembered for his drive and ambition, an entrepreneur and former Millwood High School student whose loved ones
speak of him with a mixture of pride and aching loss.
On the night of Friday, July 17, 2015, Ware was driving through a neighborhood in northeast Oklahoma City, heading along Northeast 79th Place. It was around 10:40 p.m. when his ordinary trip was shattered. According to investigators, as he moved through the 700 block of NE 79th Place, multiple suspects opened fire on his vehicle in what police believed was an attempted robbery. Gunfire tore into the car, and as the shots were fired, his vehicle slowed and came to a stop near 713 NE 79th Place, a quiet residential stretch that suddenly became the scene of a fatal ambush.
When officers arrived in response to reports of a shooting, they found Ware inside the vehicle, suffering from serious gunshot wounds. Emergency medical personnel rushed him from the street to a nearby hospital, but despite efforts to save him, he was pronounced dead not long after arrival. The case was recorded as a death by force and added to gun-violence and homicide databases, listing his age, city and the date that would forever mark the end of his life: July 17, 2015.
In the days that followed, Oklahoma City police worked to reconstruct what had happened on that dark stretch of roadway. Their investigation, drawing on evidence from the scene and follow-up inquiries, led them to two young men they believed were responsible for the attempted robbery and shooting. Authorities identified the suspects as 18-year-old D’angelo E. Brack and 24-year-old Cordelro Adams. Officers located them at a home in the 800 block of Katherine Place, where they were arrested and taken into custody. Both men were booked into the Oklahoma County Jail on complaints of first-degree murder and robbery with a dangerous weapon, reflecting law enforcement’s conclusion that Ware’s killing occurred in the course of a violent robbery attempt.
While court records and detailed trial outcomes are not clearly laid out in publicly available summaries, the arrest and charging of Brack and Adams gave a name and a face to the violence that had taken Ware’s life. Meanwhile, his family prepared to lay him to rest. Funeral notices show services held at Greater First Deliverance Temple in Oklahoma City, followed by burial at Hillcrest Memory Gardens in nearby Spencer, Oklahoma. Online, friends and relatives have continued to leave messages, recalling his smile, his role as a father, and the plans he never had the chance to fulfill. Together, the police reports, homicide databases, funeral records and memorial pages sketch a portrait of a young life cut down in a sudden burst of gunfire, and of a family and community left to carry his memory forward long after the arrests were made.
