Last Updated on July 3, 2024, 4:39 PM | Published: July 2, 2024
OKLAHOMA CITY — (Article UPDATED throughout) — An Oklahoma City Police officer is recovering from emergency surgery, and an armed suspect is dead after a standoff on the near North Side of OKC on Tuesday.
Police are now counting this encounter as officer involved shooting #4 and homicide #42 for the City of Oklahoma City in 2024.
According to OKCPD Public Information Officer Captain Valerie Littlejohn, officers were sent to a home near the intersection of West Eubanks and N. Barnes around 9:15 AM on reports that a man was pointing a gun at a person in the home where there were two women and three children.
The address is 2243 W. Eubanks St.
Shots fired – officer hit
When officers arrived, they attempted to talk from across the street to the suspect, 22-year-old Kavon Ragan, who was on the porch of the home.
According to Capt. Littlejohn, Ragan continued to go in and out of the home, would not cooperate with the officers, and fired at officers “randomly” and “refused all opportunities to surrender peacefully.”
In one of those instances, Sgt. Joshua Scott with OKCPD was wounded. Rather than wait for an EMSA ambulance to arrive, another officer immediately transported Scott to the trauma unit at the OU Medical Center in OKC.
Scott was taken into surgery. He is recovering and “doing fine,” according to Capt. Littlejohn.
“They evacuated several homes there, around that house, just for safety reasons, if one of the suspects rounds went into another home, we didn’t want any innocent bystanders in those homes,” said Littlejohn in a news conference after the incident was over. “So, we tried to evacuate those as quickly as possible, as safely as possible, and get them to a safe area.”
Fatal shot ends standoff
The last time Ragan came outside to fire at officers was at 11:47 AM. That was when a member of the OKCPD Tactical Team, in an armored vehicle close to the house, shot and killed Ragan.
An entry team then entered the home and found the five other occupants “unharmed.”
Reports from some broadcast media sources of a police “sniper” killing the suspect are misleading in that the shot that killed the suspect was from close range inside the armored vehicle and not made from a long distance.
In the course of the news conference at the scene Tuesday, Littlejohn said that they don’t know if the suspect was in any way related to the other people who were in the home. No further information has been given at this time.
Other officers directly involved in the standoff were: Sergeant Clint Music (15 years of service); Sergeant Matthew Gilmore (20 ½ years of service); Unnamed member of the U.S. Marshals Task Force.
Free Press will publish updates to this story as reliable information is released.
Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
