Investigators are examining what happened between two confrontations, including a reported phone call that brought a gun to the scene.
OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. — The murder case against Berry Russell Jr. is built around a short but consequential sequence documented through police accounts, reported court records, social-media footage and Russell’s own statements after 43-year-old Myron Cooper was fatally shot outside an Oklahoma City hotel.
The evidence described publicly does not tell the story from one uninterrupted viewpoint. A Facebook Live recording reportedly captured an interaction inside a hotel bar. Investigators later obtained statements about two physical confrontations in the parking lot. Russell supplied his own description of the moments before the shooting. Police tracked Cooper after he left the scene wounded, and a call Russell made to his wife became significant because investigators say it resulted in a gun being brought to him. Together, those pieces form the outline of the prosecution allegation while also preserving factual disputes that have not been resolved by a court.
The social-media footage comes first in that evidentiary chain. According to court documents obtained by KFOR and described by Law&Crime, Cooper’s wife was seen interacting with Russell during a Facebook Live broadcast at Sunni B’s Sports Bar and Grill, inside the Broadway Inn & Suites OKC. Russell reportedly whispered into her ear, and the interaction was characterized in the documents and subsequent coverage as flirting. The available reporting does not disclose what Russell said into her ear, meaning the video may show proximity and interaction without independently explaining the content of the exchange. Cooper nevertheless saw what was happening and confronted Russell, police said.
That confrontation moved into the parking lot and turned physical, according to investigators. The first fight was broken up. What followed is one of the most important transitions in the case because the men were no longer continuously fighting. Russell told police that he went back inside and waited for Cooper to leave so he could avoid another confrontation. If viewed alone, that statement depicts an effort to separate himself from Cooper. Investigators also examined another action Russell took while waiting, however, and it gives the interval a different potential significance in the criminal investigation.
Russell telephoned his wife and told her to “come right,” according to the court-document account. Investigators interpreted the phrase as a request for her to bring him a gun. Police said she later arrived with the weapon Russell had allegedly requested. The report does not establish that Russell expressly used the word “gun” in the quoted phrase, so the interpretation belongs to investigators and should be identified as such. At the same time, police say a gun was in Russell’s possession before the second encounter and that he later used a pistol to shoot Cooper. How prosecutors connect the phone call, the delivery and the later shooting could become important in evaluating Russell’s actions during the break between confrontations.
Russell’s reported statement provides a different type of evidence because it describes what he says Cooper did immediately before the shooting. After waiting, Russell believed Cooper had left and began walking back to his car, according to the account. Police say Cooper then pulled up beside Russell’s vehicle. Russell said he turned and ran back toward the bar, with Cooper pursuing him. He told investigators that Cooper caught him and repeatedly punched him in the back of the head. Russell said he then drew the pistol from his pocket and shot Cooper in the chest. No final judicial finding establishing the truth or legal effect of that account appears in the public materials reviewed for this story.
Some points after the gunfire are clearer because police publicly described Cooper’s movements. Sgt. Dillon Quirk told KOKH that Cooper got into a vehicle after he was shot and drove along the highway, stopping at several places. Calls were made asking police to check on him. Cooper eventually reached the area of Southeast 15th Street and Interstate 35, where authorities found him in critical condition and arranged his transport to a hospital. The northside shooting location and the place where Cooper ultimately received emergency assistance were several miles apart, requiring investigators to link the wounded man to an altercation that had occurred elsewhere.
Cooper underwent surgery but died the next morning, police said. Officers found Russell shortly after the shooting, interviewed him and booked him into the Oklahoma County Detention Center. The department’s public bulletin described the booking as being on a murder complaint. Law&Crime later reported that Russell stood accused of first-degree murder and was being held on a $10 million bond. Those are allegations and detention details, not findings of guilt. The criminal justice system must still determine what offenses, if any, are proven by admissible evidence and how the law applies to Russell’s account of the second confrontation.
The police bulletin itself demonstrates why close source comparison matters in this case. The notice was transmitted on the afternoon of July 24 and says officers had been called “last night,” while KFOR, Law&Crime and Oklahoma City Free Press all describe the shooting as occurring late July 23. Yet a separate incident field in the bulletin says July 24 at 11:32 p.m., a time that had not occurred when the notice was distributed. The most consistent chronology across the contemporaneous reporting is a late-July 23 shooting followed by Cooper’s death on July 24, but the conflicting government field remains part of the published record and has not been explained in the sources reviewed.
There are other limits to what can responsibly be said. The publicly reviewed reports do not disclose a complete forensic reconstruction of the parking lot, the full Facebook Live recording, every witness statement, medical evidence beyond Cooper’s hospitalization and death, or a complete current criminal docket. They also do not establish what Cooper or Russell may have said to one another during every stage of the confrontation. Those gaps matter because the case involves sharply different implications depending on the timing and sequence: separation after the first fight, acquisition of a gun, a renewed encounter, an alleged pursuit and the firing of a fatal shot.
Police described the killing as an isolated event and said there was no continuing threat to the public, KOKH reported. Cooper’s death was also counted among the city’s homicides during a period of several deadly incidents. That citywide context explains some of the urgency surrounding the initial police response but does not supply evidence about Russell’s individual culpability. Homicide statistics cannot resolve whether his reported fear during the second encounter was reasonable, whether his earlier actions bear on that claim, or what conclusions should be drawn from the call that investigators say brought the pistol to the scene.
Russell later gave an interview to The Black Chronicle, which published a story about it Aug. 20 under a headline quoting him as saying, “I Did Not Want to Kill That Man.” The full interview is not publicly accessible without a subscription, so its additional contents cannot be independently assessed from the accessible page and are not used here to expand Russell’s account. The headline nevertheless represents a later public statement attributed directly to the accused man and is consistent with the fact that he has offered his own narrative of the confrontation rather than remaining publicly silent.
The case therefore turns less on whether Cooper was shot — police say Russell admitted firing the weapon — than on how the events leading to that shot are proved and interpreted. Investigators have identified video evidence, a first fight, a phone call, a delivered firearm and a second confrontation. Russell has described being chased and hit immediately before he fired. Cooper died after driving away and undergoing surgery. Each piece performs a different role in the developing case, and none substitutes for the court process that will decide which allegations are established beyond the level of police reports and preliminary records. No final adjudication was found in the publicly accessible sources reviewed through Aug. 30.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.