A welfare check at a home in the 500 block of West D Avenue in Heavener ended with officers finding Stephanie Strock dead outside the residence, and her boyfriend, 28-year-old Austin Morrison, arrested hours later at a nearby park. Strock, who was pregnant at the time of her death, suffered injuries that investigators described as consistent with a homicide.
According to KOKH, Heavener Police Department officers responded to the welfare check call on Monday and discovered Strock's body outside the home. Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation agents believe Morrison was with Strock that night and that the encounter ended in an assault, the station reports. Authorities later found Morrison walking near a park in Heavener, not far from the scene, as 4029TV also reported.
Reports differ on Strock's age. KOKH and 4029TV both identified her as 20 years old, while a separate account citing a friend, Cathy Ritter, described her as 19 and said she was seven months pregnant at the time of her death, according to a report carried by Yahoo News. The medical examiner's office is still working to determine how Strock died, per the same 4029TV account.
Charges and Custody Status Still Taking Shape
The exact charges against Morrison are also described differently across reports. KOKH states he was arrested on two counts of first-degree murder for the deaths of Strock and her unborn child, and 4029TV similarly reported that he faces two charges of first-degree murder. The Yahoo News report, however, cited Ritter saying Morrison had been booked into the LeFlore County Jail on a single charge of first-degree murder.
Morrison was taken into custody at the LeFlore County Detention Center, and bond had not been set because he had not yet made an initial court appearance, per the 4029TV report. The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation confirmed on Monday, October 26, that it had been contacted to assist with a homicide investigation in Heavener, and the agency confirmed Morrison's arrest the following day, Tuesday, October 27, according to the report attributed to Yahoo News. Heavener police had requested OSBI's assistance with the investigation, 4029TV notes.
A Broader Pattern in Oklahoma
Cases involving violence against pregnant women point to a documented public-health concern tracked nationally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found that intimate partner violence during pregnancy is associated with fetal injury or death, and that roughly 40% of homicides among people known to be pregnant or within a year of pregnancy are related to intimate partner violence, according to the CDC.
Oklahoma's own numbers on intimate partner violence remain among the highest in the country. The 2023-2024 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey found that 41.6% of Oklahoma women and 25.5% of Oklahoma men had experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetimes, placing the state eighth-highest nationally for women and second-highest for men, according to Oklahoma Watch. The outlet also reported that 37% of Oklahoma women and 33.9% of Oklahoma men reported experiencing domestic psychological aggression, and that an analysis of 2023 male-on-female homicide data found more than half of the victims were wives or intimate partners of their killers. Those lifetime rates have actually declined over the past decade, Oklahoma Watch notes, falling from 49.1% for women and 40.7% for men in 2010-2012 to the current figures.
Oklahoma also maintains a formal review process for maternal deaths. The state's Maternal Mortality Review Committee examines deaths of women of childbearing age to determine whether they were pregnancy related or pregnancy associated, and whether they might have been preventable, according to the Oklahoma State Department of Health. The investigation into Strock's death remains active as the medical examiner's office continues its work.
