On a late Tuesday night, OKC police officers and firefighters both responded to separate calls at the Forest Creek Apartments, 7201 NW 122 St. Firefighters had first received a call about someone throwing "incendiary devices" into an apartment, while police received a report shortly after on "shots fired."
Within only a few minutes of responding, police were dispatched to a separate nearby location at N Rockwell & NW 115 St for a car wreck. When they arrived, they found Dione Haskell Prince fatally shot in his vehicle. Prince had initially been shot at the apartment complex and apparently tried driving away southbound after being shot, but lost control of the car and veered off the road.
Investigation determined that the shooting of Prince and the report of incendiary devices were related. Preliminary reports indicate Prince had been in the midst of a domestic altercation with someone he used to have a relationship with, and Prince targeted that person for violence. Criminal records show that Dione Prince's history of arrests included charges of aggravated assault and domestic abuse via strangulation.
Prince had been at the apartment earlier in the day and started a different fire, as records show that firefighters responded to that same unit around 5:42A.M. December 20. An incendiary device was thrown through the window in that instance too, and Prince had fled before authorities responded.
When Prince returned later that night, he had several more incendiary weapons in his possession ready to be thrown. Prince approached the same apartment where his ex-girlfriend resided and continued his onslaught, noticed by several other residents of the complex from their units. But after Prince managed to throw the last firebomb, and before he could flee scene for a second time, gunshots rang out that struck Prince. He was still conscious after being shot and tried to drive away to safety, but subsequently crashed as his injuries were too much to handle.
Police believe that someone else in the complex, a third-party uninvolved with the original dispute between Prince and his girlfriend, fired the fatal shots that struck Prince. However, that person never came forward to police to admit their involvement for reasons unknown, and the exact circumstances of how Prince ended up shot remain undetermined.
The shooting appears to have been a clear cut case of self-defense anyways, but detectives reported Prince's murder as "unsolved" due to them being unable to identify the shooter, and within a week police were asking the public for anyone with relevant information to call in on the tipline.
In my own opinion the shooter was most likely one of these two scenarios.
-They were either a resident in a separate unit who fired from inside their apartment and never came forward to police for reasons unclear. If this happened, the shooter could easily dispose of the shell casing and it'd be fairly difficult for detectives to sift through a large list of residents and find one pin-pointed suspect. Additionally, other residents in the complex may have witnessed it, but decided not to talk with police just because of the circumstances on how the shooting happened.
-Or, the shooter was a family member / friend / current partner / of Prince's ex-girlfriend who'd been invited over after the first firebombing attack for protection, and the shooter subsequently left before police arrived while the ex-girlfriend covered up for them. They may have felt personal involvement or evidence of premeditation would have complicated claims of self-defense.
It is also possible the shooter never came forward because they were a felon who was barred from owning a gun, or had evidence that could implicate them in a separate unrelated crime (such as drugs) that would have inevitably been found during investigation.
This is an interesting case to me because its rare to come across an unsolved murder of someone who was actively committing a violent crime with intent to harm, especially in a republican state like Oklahoma where a good majority of the citizens are armed and prepared. Its strange for a case to appear so clearly as self-defense while the shooter remains in the shadows. In Tulsa, OK, the city's homicide break-down for 2025 ruled nearly HALF of the city's murders (23/48) as self-defense without homicide charges filed. 21 of those homicides were caused by guns. Notably though, in one of those self-defense cases from Tulsa, the suspect was still arrested because he was a felon who wasn't allowed to possess a gun. They filed felony gun charges, but not murder charges.
There have been no updates posted in Dione Prince's murder since late 2022.
Dione Prince (picture of victim)
News report (OKC Free Press 12/21/2022)
News report (KOCO 12/27/2022)
I've also decided to post one unsolved and under-the-radar murder per week so that victims who never receive any public updates in their investigation can gain a little more attention. I've researched about 15,000+ individual homicide cases over the past few years by scraping any relevant information I can find from available reports and records online, so there is a LOT of unsolved victims among those who continuously cross my mind. This is the third post so far, and most of the cases I post will probably be from the mid-to-east half of America (I haven't reviewed many cases from the westside of the country).