OKC police say few arrests despite large crowds downtown at OKC Thunder Champions Parade
Despite the immense crowd turnout for the OKC Thunder Champions Parade, police reported a comparatively low number of arrests during the celebration.
Due to the hundreds of thousands of people who were expected to swarm downtown Oklahoma City, the local police department called in teams from law enforcement agencies across the state to assist with security and crowd control. But OKC police Sgt. Dillon Quirk said it was "a fairly quiet, went-how-it-was-supposed-to day," all things considered.
Police arrested seven people, Quirk said, two of the arrests being related to firearms, but most being related to public intoxication.
"One being a juvenile, which is a misdemeanor arrest, and the other one was an adult intoxicated with a firearm," he said. "But there wasn't any threatening acts of violence with those arrests or anything like that; it was simply the possession charges. We really had just misdemeanor stuff, public drunkenness and arrests of that nature."
More: What is OKC's population? How does it compare with Thunder parade crowd expectations?
A fatal shooting was reported late Tuesday into early Wednesday in downtown OKC's Bricktown district, long after official parade festivities had ended.
Just before 11:50 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to the shooting in front of the Harkins Theater on E. Reno. The victim, Lyric Lewis, who'd just turned 18 a month ago, was taken by private vehicle to a local hospital, where police said she was later pronounced dead.
Quirk said it was unclear what led to the shooting, and no arrests had been made in connection with it as of Wednesday morning.
Another homicide occurred during the afternoon Tuesday in the city's southside. Around 3:15 p.m., police responded to a shooting in front of a home in the 2500 block of SW 45.
Edwin Jelinek, 44, was taken to a hospital in the area but died of his gunshot wounds, police said.
According to a news release, a suspect fled the scene in a dark red vehicle that police spotted soon afterward. Following a short slow-speed pursuit from officers, the 32-year-old suspect stopped at a residence and surrendered, police said.
The Oklahoman is not naming the man because he has not yet been formally charged with murder, but he already faces accusations of automobile larceny in a previous case from late May.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC police say few arrests despite massive turnout at Thunder parade
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