A day care. A mall. A highway. Indianapolis shootings leave residents caught in the crossfire
This story includes graphic descriptions of shootings and trauma. If you or someone you know has been impacted by gun violence, please visit www.indynfsresources.com to learn about social and health care services in the Indianapolis area that can help.
More than 3,000 people have been shot in Indianapolis since an extraordinary streak of gun violence began in 2020.
Every shooting causes anguish for victims' families. Survivors and witnesses can suffer crippling trauma for years. And each killing with a firearm costs the city and state more than a million dollars in public safety, health care and social services.
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Some shootings are driven by personal or drug-related feuds. But some victims are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Democratic Mayor Joe Hogsett said in this year's run for reelection that Indianapolis homicides dropped 16% from 2021 to 2022. He also pointed out that killings are on pace to be lower again this year.
Homicides — most of which are committed with a firearm — are up 85% compared to a decade and a half ago. The city’s population has only increased about 9% in that time.
That's the big picture that gets missed when politicians and the media compare back-to-back years. Amid the short-term rises and falls, the past few years of killings are unlike anything the city has seen.
There are other alarming trends, too. IndyStar found that accidental shootings, public school punishments over firearms and road rage shootings have all gone up in recent years.
All the while, state politicians in Indiana have kept making it easier to carry guns.
In 2011, legislators passed a law preventing local governments from creating their own firearm regulations. In 2014, they made it legal for adults to keep guns in their cars in school parking lots. In 2019 and 2021, they slashed handgun permit fees.
Then in 2022, lawmakers got rid of the handgun permit requirement altogether. Indiana is now among the half of U.S. states where residents no longer need a permit to carry a handgun in public.
Federal data suggests the vast majority of gun owners are lawful. And Second Amendment advocates in Indiana argue that requiring a permit was like licensing a constitutional right.
Indianapolis police and state law enforcement feared nixing the permit requirement would make gun violence worse.
IndyStar tracked shootings for a year beginning July 1, 2022, when permitless carry — also called constitutional carry — took effect to see what would happen. For 12 months, reporters went to crime scenes, interviewed witnesses and examined statistics.
We did not find hard evidence that permitless carry has changed crime in the city. We did find loss, pain and resilience during an ongoing public health crisis.
Here are some of the stories we found across Indianapolis in the past year.
July 4, 2022. Holiday party
About 30 people gather to celebrate the United States' birthday at East 38th Street and North Arlington Avenue. Then, for seemingly no reason at all, dozens of gunshots suddenly tear through the party.
By the time it ends, 51 bullet casings litter the ground. Two children — an 8-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy — are rushed to the hospital with bullet wounds. An adult is also injured.
The kids were shot while playing in a bounce house, a witness tells IndyStar. A bullet went through the back of the 10-year-old's thigh.
Indianapolis police tell local media the shooting was unprovoked: A car pulled up and just started firing.
"It was just random," says the witness, who doesn't want to be identified because the case is unsolved.
The 10-year-old is "doing OK," the witness adds. He's going to counseling. "He has PTSD, doesn't like to be around a lot of people. But other than that, he's OK." The witness doesn't know how the little girl is doing.
The two children are among 67 minors who were shot and injured between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023.
"I just don't understand where it's all coming from," the witness says, talking about gun violence. "I just feel sad for our young kids that gotta grow up in it."
The boy's family is "just trying to move on."
In 2023, they celebrated the Fourth of July out of town.
July 17, 2022. Greenwood mall food court
Phones, wallets, shopping bags and stuffed animals lay scattered throughout the empty food court at the Greenwood Park Mall.
It's a Sunday evening — a time for teenagers and families to stroll between the brightly lit stores. But the people who own the abandoned goods have vanished.
Near the food court restroom, the body of a man with firearm magazines strapped across his body lies on the ground.
An hour before, the 20-year-old gunman traveled a mile from his Greenwood apartment to the mall. He stepped through the mall doors at 4:54 p.m. — a large black backpack sagging down his back — and went straight to the food court bathroom.
When he emerged, he had an AR-15-style rifle.
He shot 30-year-old Victor Gomez, who was near the restroom. He shot Pedro Piñeda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Piñeda, 37, as the married couple ate dinner. All three died.
A 22-year-old woman was shot in the leg. A bullet fragment bounced off a wall and struck a 12-year-old girl in the back as she was running for the exit.
Both survived.
Brigette Terrell tells IndyStar after the shooting that she was there with her two children. It was her son's birthday.
When she heard the explosive gunfire, she grabbed both of her kids and forced them to run ahead of her.
If I stay right behind them, she thought, maybe he'll shoot me instead.
Then more shooting erupted.
It was from another person, with another gun.
Elisjsha Dicken was eating in the food court with his girlfriend when the gunman opened fire. He pulled out his 9mm handgun, steadied his forearms on top of a trash can and fired at the shooter 10 times from 40 yards away, according to Greenwood police.
Eight shots hit his target. The mass shooter collapsed to the ground.
When police move in to investigate, they find two AR-15-style rifles, a .357 caliber pistol and more than 100 bullets.
The shooter fired 24 times. Police never found a clear motive.
Terrell says her sense of safety is shattered. On the drive home, she imagines every car behind her is another shooter. Every unknown noise is someone coming to harm her family.
"It just made me realize," she says, "it could happen anywhere."
Mass shooting: The victims at Greenwood Park Mall
Aug. 27, 2022. Downtown Indianapolis
Dutch soldier Simmie Poetsema risked his life helping Afghanis escape their country when the government collapsed and the Taliban took over in 2021.
Now he's in Indiana for military training, a seemingly safer assignment.
Poetsema, 26, and two other Dutch servicemen visit a club in Indianapolis. Coming out of it, a fight breaks out between their group and another group of guys.
The crowd pushes and shoves. A man falls to the ground.
A male witness with the Dutch soldiers tells police later that he thinks someone pulled out a black object. He worried it might be a firearm, the witness says, because "this is America."
The Dutch soldiers head back to their hotel on South Meridian. They're in front of it when a Ford F-150 pulls up.
Someone in the pickup opens fire, and it speeds away, according to police.
The three Dutch soldiers have been hit.
Six 9mm bullet casings dot the street afterward. A few blocks north, the Soldiers & Sailors Monument stands illuminated in the dark.
The pickup driver tells police he was surprised by the attack. When the shooting stopped, he says, he shouted at Shamar Duncan, 22, in the backseat.
“I just spazzed,” Duncan allegedly said.
People were stomping his friend's head, Duncan tells detectives, before he and his group hauled off to the pickup.
Duncan has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
Poetsema's family flies to Indianapolis to be with him. His friends survive, but Poetsema dies two days later.
Sept. 16, 2022. Day care parking lot
It's a startling disclosure from one man to another at a bus stop in downtown: I killed my girlfriend.
After the listener calls 911, an IndyGo bus pulls up. The doors swing open. The man blurts it out again.
It'll be on the news tonight, he says, according to police.
By that time, the shooting of 32-year-old Krystal Walton is already making headlines.
It was the morning rush hour. She’d just dropped her children off at a church day care center on the west side.
Walton was still in the parking lot when someone shot her five times with a .40 caliber pistol.
Officers arrive near the bus stop at 10th and North Delaware streets, where the 911 call was made. They find Orlando Mitchell carrying an AR-15-style rifle.
Gunfire roars across the city block. Police shoot him in the leg, they say, because he won't drop the weapon.
Mitchell is treated by medics and detained. He is charged with murder, invasion of privacy for violating a no-contact order, criminal recklessness and unlawful possession of a firearm.
Mitchell was convicted of a domestic battery misdemeanor against Walton — the mother of Mitchell's son — two months before she was killed.
Because of that record, Mitchell isn't allowed to have a firearm.
He has two when police shoot him.
Indiana has a higher rate of intimate partner homicides per capita than the country as a whole, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice and Indiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence.
In addition, more than 80% of the 74 suspected domestic violence killings in Indiana between July 1, 2022, and June 30, 2023, were carried out with a gun.
The national rate of gun use in domestic violence killings: around 60%.
Sept. 27, 2022. East side
IMPD announces three different gunshot detection system pilots are up and running on the city's east side, as the city searches for technology that can help officers better respond to shootings.
Sept. 30, 2022. Barber shop
Cheron Reed is talking with a customer about his newborn baby when shots ring out.
Boom boom boom boom.
“It just went down,” Reed tells IndyStar later.
Champz Barber Shop, where Reed worked, fills with smoke. Bullets ricochet off the red walls lined with boxing memorabilia.
Two groups of men inside the shop had started shooting at each other, according to police.
Kevin Lamont Stigger, a 24-year-old customer, is killed while running for the door. Police say he didn't know the shooters.
Another client is shot in the legs while getting a haircut. A bullet goes through both her calves.
A third person shot in the attack also survives.
In the shooting's aftermath, neighboring businesses and churches come together for Champz. They raise and donate money. The shop's barbers give free cuts to kids.
They want to send a message: The parlor on East 10th Street is defined by its community, not the mindless violence of one afternoon.
But shortly after, Reed leaves the job. He was scared to go back. He was mad about his city.
The attack shook his mental health. It affected his relationship with his family.
It changed his outlook on life.
“I didn’t see it getting any better,” Reed says.
Jamion Johnson has been charged with reckless homicide and attempted murder, and Rondale Patterson has been charged with criminal recklessness.
Police are still searching for the person who shot and killed Stigger.
Nov. 8, 2022. Outside her own home
"Help!" Sherry Wolfe screams.
Keesha Britt runs down the stairs in her apartment along East 38th Street to aid her neighbor outside. Gunshots ring out, and Britt freezes on the verge of stepping through her door.
The shots and shouting bring people to their windows. Some see a man in a gray BMW shoot at Wolfe, a beloved neighborhood figure, right in front of her home.
Then he gets out of the car, a witness says.
"But I love you," Wolfe tells the shooter.
"No you don't," the shooter says. He shoots her again.
Four 9mm bullet cartridges are found near where she fell. An Indianapolis police officer tries to strap a tourniquet around her thigh to stop the bleeding, but it doesn't work.
Police find Wolfe's former partner parked in a driveway by East 46th Street, just north of the train tracks that divide Lawrence.
Robert Reed Jr., 65, goes in for a police interview without a fight. He was mad because Wolfe had $500 of his money, he says.
“I was just trying to scare her,” Reed says, according to police.
His temper went off the handle. A spur-of-the-moment thing, he says.
Wolfe dies two days later at age 59.
She is no longer seen putting flowers out on her decorated porch when the weather turns warm. She is no longer there for Britt's children, who welcomed her love like a grandmother's love during Christmas and birthdays.
"I'm going to miss her," Britt tells IndyStar.
Reed has been charged with murder.
Dec. 31, 2022. Grandmother's driveway
"Three people shooting at you over 30 times — to me, you weren't expecting him to get out of that car talking." — Vickie Driver speaking about the Indianapolis officers who shot her grandson, Anthony Maclin, after finding him in a car in her driveway with a firearm on his lap. Two of the officers who shot him were indicted for multiple battery and criminal recklessness charges. Maclin says he never grabbed the weapon, but an attorney for the two officers said Maclin raised the gun toward them.
He's one of eight people shot by police in Indianapolis in the year after permitless carry took effect.
Jan. 1, 2023. Several residential areas
12:15 a.m.
A 68-year-old woman is watching TV at her home on the east side when she suddenly realizes she's been shot. She sees a bullet hole in her front door. Seven .40 caliber bullet casings are found nearby.
1:18 a.m.
A 19-year-old man is walking to a friend’s house on the west side. He hears gunshots. Pain strikes his foot. He realizes he's been shot.
4 a.m.
A 22-year-old woman is shot in a residential area on the east side. She thinks someone was shooting from a car.
4:31 a.m.
A shot goes off inside a home on the east side. A 30-year-old woman is brought to the hospital.
6:54 a.m.
A bullet hits a 41-year-old woman on the city’s west side. Witnesses say the shots may have been fired from a passing car.
All five people survived — and all of the shooters remain at large.
Jan. 3, 2023. Castleton mall parking lot
Michael Mason Jr. and his friend are "jovial" leaving Castleton Square Mall, a witness tells police. The two walk up to a white Chevy Impala in the parking lot — just like the one they arrived in — and try to open its doors.
Loud bangs erupt. The rear passenger window shatters. Mason falls to the ground.
It's the wrong car.
A passenger in the car's back seat thought he was being robbed. He fires his gun, he tells police, to protect himself.
Mason's friend runs away. The passenger gets out of the car, chases Mason's friend down and fires again.
The friend pretends to be dead. Three 9mm bullets tore through their leg, police say later.
Mason, still on the ground, does die. Gunfire hit his chest and limbs. He was 16.
The passenger, Clyde Johnson, tells police he thought he was “being hunted" because he's a witness in another shooting.
Johnson was at the scene when a man started firing at a family in front of an east side home in November. Eria Bankhead, 40, was shot and killed in front of Johnson and her children.
Johnson is facing a voluntary manslaughter charge and two battery charges.
Jan. 11, 2023. Interstate 65
Richard Donnell Hamilton is a passenger in a van on Interstate 65 in Greenwood when someone opens fire from another car.
That single bullet ends the life of the man best known as Coach Nell.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8:30 p.m., Hamilton could be found on the field at Tarkington Park guiding dozens of rollicking kids through football drills.
He saw himself in the young players who made up the roster of his Indy Steelers football team. And the kids saw themselves in him.
A former college football player whose career was cut short after guns were found in his car, Hamilton dedicated the last two decades of his life to helping young people in the Butler-Tarkington area build fortitude and stay clear of danger.
It's over at 43 years old.
Police speak to witnesses. They collect evidence. They think the gunfire may have come from a silver or grey sedan.
But they never find who did it.
Police say it may have been road rage. If so, Hamilton's death adds to the rising number of road rage shooting deaths in the Indianapolis area and surrounding counties.
In 2018, there were nine such shootings. In 2022 there were 66.
A new field in the park where Hamilton's kids dug their cleats into the earth while learning about community and perseverance will soon bear his name, transforming "Coach Nell" from leader into legend.
"A lot of these kids didn't have strong homes,” Dontaye Hamilton, his youngest son, told the Parks and Recreation Board. “They didn't have father figures in their life. They didn't have anybody to really show they cared for them.”
Coach Nell knew every single kid, his son said. Could name each one.
He could recite their stories.
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Jan. 13, 2023. Automobile
"He survived (Iraq) … I always say, 'He didn't win the urban war.'” — Margaret Henderson, Chris Beushausen’s mom. Beushausen, 37, was found dead in his carwhile it was still running.He was at an apartment complex on the east side when he was shot around 1 a.m. Police haven't arrested anybody or found a motive for the crime.
March 20, 2023. Garden gift store
The Yellow House gift store at Sullivan Hardware & Garden is like a drop of sunlight on North Keystone Avenue.
At the start of spring, the cream-yellow building's porch is flush with flower ornaments. Chubby owl statuettes and planter pots line the entrance path.
Then a bullet comes out of nowhere and strikes a worker in the face.
Up the road, a car crash had brought several vehicles to a stop on North Keystone Avenue. A few drivers involved in the collision pull into a Shell gas station at North 71st Street.
One of the drivers gets out of his car yelling and cussing, a witness said. Then he pulls out a pistol and charges toward the busy avenue, firing round after round at a silver SUV as it leaves the gas station.
His target, however, had nothing to do with the crash. Inside the SUV, a mother tells her 6-year-old daughter to duck as two 9mm rounds strike the back of their vehicle.
One of the other cars involved in the collision — also a silver SUV — had left the area before he started shooting, surveillance footage shows later.
About 400 feet to the south, a beloved Sullivan employee and mother is tending the cashier stand at The Yellow House when a bullet tears through the wall and hits her in the eye and temple.
She starts screaming. Someone at the store grabs tissue paper and applies first aid to her face.
She survived. But she lost her left eye.
“We feel safe in this neighborhood, but anything can happen at any time," Becky Betz, Sullivan's general manager, tells IndyStar after the shooting. "Someone's anger has impacted a very innocent person just doing her job."
Marqueses Tipton has been charged with aggravated battery and two counts of criminal recklessness.
March 30, 2023. Vacant house
For years, people living in Community Heights have put up with the sudden pops and bangs.
“It’s almost like we’ve gotten numb to these shootings,” says Gregg Comer, a resident.
Then came the case of Stephen Flynn.
Flynn, 57, was lured to a vacant home in the east side neighborhood and shot in the chest while delivering pizzas. He left behind two kids.
A single 9mm bullet cartridge is found at the scene.
His death angers Comer. But it doesn't surprise him.
In the 17 years he’s lived there, Comer says, he’s seen parts of the area fall into disarray.
Crumbling roads. No landscaping. Trash piles at bus stops. Sixteenth Street, which leads to the neighborhood’s crown jewel and namesake — Community Hospital East — is pocked with potholes and dotted with garbage.
That lack of care, he thinks, goes hand-in-hand with the shootings. They feed each other in a cycle.
He hasn’t given up on Community Heights. But he’s tired of politicians. He's tired of their grandstanding around so-called solutions.
He's tired of being numb to the sound of gunfire.
Justin Turner has been charged with murder, robbery resulting in serious bodily injury and unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon.
April 16, 2023. Home
Billy Ray Mack II, 6, is downstairs watching TV in his east side home when he grabs a pistol out of his mother's purse.
His mom is upstairs in the bathroom getting ready to take the kids to visit their grandmother.
Billy fires a single round.
When the mom finds her son's lifeless body, she picks him up.
Why? She yells. Why would he do this?
Her 4-year-old daughter is also home. The little girl tells a detective she saw Billy bleeding on the covers.
The .380 caliber pistol the mother acquired to protect her family is the same pistol that shot her little boy in the head. It was in her purse, she tells police, because they live in a violent neighborhood.
As her interview nears its end, she says she wishes she never had the gun in the first place.
There were 80 accidental shooting victims in the city from January 2023 to June 2023. During the same time last year, there were 26.
Billy Ray Mack II is one of about 20 juveniles accidentally shot in the first half of 2023. Another child, 5-year-old Hakiem Scott, also died.
Billy's mom, Monick Mack, has been charged with neglect of a dependent resulting in death.
April 20, 2023. Governor's office
Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signs a law criminalizing Glock switches, tiny devices showing up at Indianapolis crime scenes that can turn handguns from semi- to fully automatic.
April 20, 2023. Scattered locations
A school bus with about 20 kids pulls up to a stop sign in a residential area on the east side. There, lying in the grass, is a teen.
He has been shot.
The bus driver calls 911. The youth is taken to a hospital, but he dies.
The day before, Derrick Houston Jr.’s mom had received the type of news moms dream of.
Her 15-year-old son was accepted into Indiana’s 21st Century Scholars program. It can cover up to 100% of a student’s tuition at a local college.
The next morning, that dream — and the life it would have lifted — disappears.
His mom and dad are devastated, his grandmother Virginia Hale tells IndyStar. Indianapolis Public Schools Superintendent Aleesia Johnson laments his death and the scourge of youth dying by gunfire.
“This is not normal,” she posts on social media. “We have accepted policies, systems, and conditions that are literally killing our future.”
Derrick's death, which remains unsolved, is the start of a violent day.
Later, two Indianapolis police officers are shot when a gunfight erupts during an investigation into a separate shooting.
A suspect leads officers on a car chase and fires enough rounds from his AR-15-style rifle to riddle a police car with bullet holes before he's shot and killed.
And in the evening, a man who appears to be intoxicated fires shots at drivers on East 96th Street. Police find 14 9mm bullet casings along the thoroughfare.
Bullet fragments strike Sam Standridge, 29, in the eye and chest. He can't see out of his left eye when IndyStar interviews him days later.
The Noblesville resident was just driving by on his way to a ballroom dance class.
“I have to think about what these bills are going to look like, and I don’t have (medical) insurance,” says Standridge, a server at a Carmel restaurant. “I have no idea what's going to happen.”
Colton Erickson has been charged with battery, criminal recklessness and criminal mischief in connection with the 96th Street shooting.
April 30, 2023. Gun store
Forty-three firearms are stolen from a Beech Grove gun store after thieves drive a stolen car through the store entryway.
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May 22, 2023. Perry Township high schools
The new weapons detection system that Southport High School students walk past in the main hallway once loomed large over 17-year-old Natalie Walker.
The senior wondered if it was overkill.
"It kind of makes it feel hostile to be walking into school and have that sitting right there," she tells IndyStar.
But she also knows that her high school experience — one without bullying, without fights, without friends bragging about guns — isn't shared by everyone.
"I feel like a lot of my friends honestly support it and really do believe it will make the school safer, and a lot of other ones hold the same reservation as me," she says.
On May 22, 2023, the Perry Township school board approved the $1.5 million system for its two high schools.
“I think we all are not blind to the increase in violence in our neighborhoods and our communities, and we just want to take that next step and to secure our campuses to make sure that our students and staff have a safe environment," said the district's associate superintendent, Chris Sampson.
Natalie just hopes the system at her school is used with her peers' best interests in mind.
"If it's not approached with empathy and it's just like, 'We need to find everything that is happening and punish everyone,' that ... could make the school environment much more hostile," she says.
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June 9-11, 2023. East and west, north and south
Friday
A 13-year-old boy is shot on the east side. A woman is shot on the east side. Someone shoots themselves on the northeast side. An 8-year-old shoots themselves on the west side. A man is shot and killed on the east side. An 11-year-old is accidentally shot on the southeast side and arrives at a hospital in critical condition.
Saturday
A man walks into a downtown hospital with a bullet graze wound. Three people are shot after the bars close downtown. A man shows up at an east side hospital after being shot. A man is shot on the south side. Another man walks into a downtown hospital after being shot.
Sunday
A man is shot and brought to a north side hospital. A 12-year-old boy is shot on the east side. Two people are shot on the west side. A man is shot on the north side. Two men walk into an east side hospital with gunshot wounds. A man is shot on the east side. Two men shoot each other after a fight breaks out on the east side.
Weekend tally: One killed. Twenty-two wounded.
June 22, 2023. Sports complex
A soccer coach is standing on the turf with the Indy Gladiators when a bullet ricochets off a metal beam and grazes her abdomen.
Two others — another coach and a player — are also grazed by bullets at the FC Pride Performance Center on East 62nd Street. The shots came from two drivers who were shooting at each other near the sports complex, players say.
Police collect a single bullet casing as evidence.
Some on the team are rattled. But the next day, the coach is back at practice. “Like a frickin’ champ,” team captain Andrew Gold tells IndyStar.
And when the Indy Gladiators take the field for the playoff final on June 24, the coach is there, too.
She handed out T-shirts and tickets from the same spot on the field where she was hit.
“It’s resiliency, it’s commitment, it’s sacrifice,” Gold says. “All these things that our team’s been doing for two to three years, this wasn’t anything different.”
No one has been arrested.
June 25, 2023. Broad Ripple Avenue
Nolitha Memani is out with a friend in Broad Ripple when gunshots send the crowds around her into a panic.
The 23-year-old drops to the ground and lies flat on the sidewalk. Then she starts to pray.
She prays she won't get hit by a bullet. She prays that the shooter — or shooters — don't come her way.
Memani and her friend survive, but three young people are shot and killed nearby. The victims are 24-year-old Tywain Henning, 22-year-old Kaleyia Preer and 22-year-old Christopher Lee Wilson Jr.
A fourth person is hit by gunfire but survives.
Memani listens as a man bangs his fists on the buildings lining Broad Ripple Avenue.
“No!” he screams.
When police arrive, she and her friend get up from the ground and take off.
In the days that follow, Memani wakes up feeling sad.
She thinks about the bodies she saw on the ground. It's not normal to see someone shot like that, she thinks.
Kara Hinds has been charged with reckless homicide, two counts of murder, two counts of battery and a count of criminal recklessness.
Where we are today
The Indianapolis families whose lives have been changed by a gunshot live in a reality far from the stages where politicians debate gun rights and homicide counts.
No law will bring back 15-year-old Derrick Houston Jr., the would-be 21st Century Scholar. No political party can undo the damage to the 10-year-old boy who was shot through the legs at a Fourth of July party.
IndyStar started this project after police warned permitless carry could be bad for crime. But a year after the law took effect, the same agencies that came out in force against it told IndyStar they couldn't confidently say if permitless carry has affected violence.
Criminal justice researcher Eric Grommon, a professor at Indiana University Indianapolis, said you need to look at years of data before and after a law is passed to really get a picture of its influence.
Yet there's still concern that the new reality ushered in by the law is like a match near a powder keg.
"You see more and more people wanting (a firearm) just to protect themselves and not truly understanding that tool," said Tony Lopez, with the city's Office of Public Health and Safety.
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In the back of citizens' minds is "that fear that at any moment a shooting could happen," he said.
Permitless carry is taking hold in the United States. Ten years ago, only four states didn't require a handgun permit, according to The Trace, a nonprofit news outlet. Indiana is now one among 27.
And while it might be too early to grasp the law's influence here, IndyStar found some alarming trends while reporting on the past year of shootings.
In the 2022-23 school year, 73 kids were expelled or suspended from Marion County public schools over firearm incidents. That's the highest amount in at least a decade.
The first six months of 2023 saw 80 accidental shootings — a quarter of them injured kids. The first six months of 2022 saw just a third of that number.
And in 2022 there were 66 road rage shootings in Central Indiana. In 2018, there were only nine.
Meanwhile, the number of guns on streets and in homes keeps multiplying.
Two decades ago, about 185,000 gun sale background checks occurred in the state on average each year.
In 2022, there were 1.1 million — nearly six times as many.
Before he was shot and killed in January, Richard Donnell Hamilton saw a tough road ahead for stopping the city's violence.
"I truly don't have the answer," the Indy Steelers' "Coach Nell" said in an August 2022 Facebook Live event hosted by Tea's Me Cafe. "I'm not sure anybody has the answer."
What was clear to Hamilton was the ripple effect each gunshot in Indianapolis can have across neighborhoods and generations.
"Believe me, it's out there," he said. "It happens to every parent."
"In some way," he stressed, "you are touched by gun violence."
Shari Rudavsky, Alexandria Burris, Caroline Beck, John Tufts and Phyllis Cha contributed to this article.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Shootings in Indianapolis: Residents caught in the crossfire
