Working on a safer Haven
More security, interior upgrades are planned for Sooner Haven
Two weeks after Margaret Ellington moved into Sooner Haven Apartments, a stray bullet fired from a moving vehicle shattered a window in her living room.
Ellington wasn’t hurt in the 2009 shooting. Police told her the intended targets were neighbors two doors down. Three other apartments were hit by gunfire in the same incident. She never heard of anyone being arrested.
Though frightened, Ellington stayed at Sooner Haven, but the violence continued.
Since 2011, there have been six homicides at the 150-unit public housing complex. The one- and two-bedroom apartments are scattered among more than a dozen buildings that spread over half a city block bounded by NE 36 on the north, Lottie Avenue on west and Prospect Avenue on the east.
Ellington, 49, said recent improvements seem to be making the complex safer, especially a series of security upgrades paid for with federal money.
“Now that we have security cameras and more lighting and the cameras are facing the doors and the streets, it’s easier for the security officers to see what is going on,” Ellington said. But it hasn’t ended the killing. Last month, Devonte Ellison, 25, died three days after being shot at the complex. Police arrested Ellison’s girlfriend, Renita Keshawn Wells, 24, on a murder complaint. Criminal charges against Wells are pending.
In none of the other five homicides has the killer been convicted of a crime. In three of those cases,
police haven’t made an arrest. In two more, police arrested suspects but prosecutors dropped charges against them.
Cases go unsolved
An investigation completed last year by
The Oklahoman showed the apartment complex is located in a six-square-mile patch of the city where homicides are rarely solved. An analysis show that between Jan. 1, 2008, and June 30, 2015, 46 people were killed in the area bounded by NE 10, NE 36, N Lincoln Boulevard and Interstate 35.
Of those 46 cases, 31, or about two-thirds, failed to result in a conviction — nearly 20 percentage points higher than the rate at which homicides go unsolved citywide.
In recent years, the complex has been the scene of numerous shootings and other violent incidents, the target of police sweeps and a source of frustration of the local council member, John Pettis Jr., who at one point said he was “absolutely fed up” with crime in the area.
While he acknowledged the complex isn’t a perfect place, Mark Gillett, executive director of the Oklahoma Housing Authority, said more upgrades are coming soon for individual apartments.
The complex already used money from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to install lighting and new surveillance cameras. A fence that made the apartments unattractive has been removed.
The complex also recently received approval to renovate its 1970s-era apartments using more federal money.
“Sooner Haven is going to go through a major transformation over the next couple of years,” Gillett said. “We’re going to rehab the interiors of each unit ... with new cabinets, new flooring, new fixtures in the bathrooms and the kitchens and also on the outsides to give the residences more of a community feel, more of a home feel.”
On a recent warm summer morning, children tossed a football on a lawn outside of an apartment. Adults sat in lawn chairs watching children play on one of the complex’s two recently upgraded playgrounds.
For Rose Etta Garza, 73, Sooner Haven has been a good place. She moved to the public housing apartments about 23 years ago.
“I haven’t had too many problems over here,” said Garza, who said she was recovering from an alcohol addiction when she moved from Lawton to Sooner Haven in 1994.
Garza, who lives in a one-bedroom apartment near the front office, said she hears a fight from time to time, but hasn’t seen much crime.
“It’s not any worse here than any place else,” Garza said.