Peyton Davidson

Justin Peyton Davidson, a 20-year-old White man known to friends and family as Peyton, was a former standout football player from Quitman, Mississippi. After graduating from Quitman High School in 2021, he played for Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College before moving to Oklahoma for work and a relationship. His father, Jason, described him as having a good heart, saying, “If he loved you, he loved you. He would go to the ends of the Earth for you.”

In the early morning hours of Saturday, October 28, 2023, Peyton was at a Halloween party on Reformatory Road in El Reno, Oklahoma. Witnesses reported that a heated conversation between Peyton and another man escalated into violence. Peyton was shot at close range in the head. A 911 caller told the dispatcher the wound was in his eye. He was rushed to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries and was later pronounced dead. His family shared that his heart beat for the last time at 7:57 p.m. that evening.

When El Reno police officers arrived at the party, they found a suspect and took him into custody. The man, identified as 21-year-old Delsin Joshua Tsotigh of Norman, was arrested at the scene and booked into the Canadian County Jail. Investigators also found a gun near Peyton’s body and sent it for DNA testing to determine its owner. Tsotigh was subsequently charged with first-degree murder, shooting with intent to kill, and assault and battery with a deadly weapon.

From the beginning, Tsotigh’s family maintained that he had acted in self-defense. The case went to trial, and in April 2025, a jury acquitted Delsin Tsotigh of first-degree murder and assault and battery charges after he argued he killed Peyton in self-defense. Following the verdict, Peyton’s father stated, “As far as justice being served, no way. I think there’s a killer on the street in El Reno, and that’s how I will always think about it.” With the acquittal, the legal case is closed as of April 2025.