Family tried to stop man charged with killing Indianapolis police officer Breann Leath

The long-time girlfriend of the man charged with killing an Indianapolis police officer sent messages to his family the night before the shooting saying he needed help for bizarre utterings and potentially dangerous behavior.

“I am deeply concerned about his mental health, he is not stable,” Bianca Davis wrote in a group text about Elliahs Dorsey, 31. “I don’t want to (call) the cops because of the way they treat Black men but if he continues the way he is we will have no choice.”

The texts were displayed on the fourth day of Dorsey’s trial for the killing of Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Officer Breann Leath on April 9, 2020. They were among a cache of evidence entered by Dorsey's attorneys that showed the family frantically tried to reach him that day because of spiraling paranoid behavior, in which he insisted someone wanted to kill him.

Dorsey’s father, mother and other relatives tried calling him more than 20 times the day of the shooting, testimony showed.

“I was concerned for him, I was trying to get him to leave,” the apartment where the shooting happened, said Dorsey’s father, Larry Dorsey, who called his son 13 times. “He was like ‘No Dad, someone is out to kill us’.”

Dorsey is charged with the murder of Leath and the attempted murder of three other officers. He is also charged with the attempted murder and criminal confinement of his girlfriend at the time, Aisha Brown.

Dorsey’s lawyers have said he suffered paranoid delusions caused in part by the break-up with Davis after seven years, the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic and possible head trauma from football through two years of college.

He has entered an insanity defense, which means the jury at the Marion County Community Justice Center can find him not responsible due to insanity or guilty but mentally ill.

Davis testified that Dorsey reacted irrationally after she broke up with him in November 2019, contending she had another boyfriend who she was going to marry. “He accused me of being unfaithful but at the same time wanting to get together,” Davis said.

'I'm hurt ... help me!': What dispatchers heard the night officer Breann Leath was killed

Davis said she was concerned for her safety when she texted the family.

“I feel endangered,” she wrote, saying Dorsey has “an obsession” and was “stalking” her.

“He’s losing it,” she wrote. “I am deeply concerned about his mental health. He is not stable.”

That warning preceded a flurry of messages from Dorsey to Davis on April 8 and April 9, many not answered by Davis, in which he talked about her phantom affair and impending marriage to someone else.

“Are you in love?” he wrote. “Are you marrying your best friend?”

Beginning in the early morning the day of Leath’s killing, 14 phone calls were exchanged between Davis and Dorsey. She said she talked to him a couple of times, telling him “to calm down and get some help.”

Davis said he had kept in touch with Dorsey after the break-up because she still cared about him.

A bearded Dorsey, at the defense table, wore glasses, a dark blue shirt and a blue striped tie, taking notes on a legal pad with a red pen for much of the testimony, and occasionally whispering in the ear of attorney Ray Casanova.

Several family members and friends testified about Dorsey’s paranoia. He carried a handgun at all times, wore a bulletproof vest, looked over his shoulders constantly, and developed odd twitches.

“He started taking a gun places where I don’t think he needed it,” said Dorsey’s older brother, Larry Dorsey, Jr. “He was very protective, couldn’t focus on a task, twisting his hair, just staring into space.”

The day Leath was shot, Dorsey paced around the east side apartment of his new girlfriend, Aisha Brown, with a semi-automatic long pistol and a handgun. He had menaced Brown for hours, she told the jury, until she called 911.

Leath and three other officers arrived shortly afterward, stood at the side of the door and knocked. Prosecutors said Dorsey fired several shots through the door within six seconds of the knock, striking Leath twice in the head.

He then shot Brown in the back and the leg as she fled the apartment

Larry Dorsey, Sr., said Dorsey was the middle of his three sons, and all three have owned handguns since they were adults and they would all go to the shooting range.

“That was our hobby,” Dorsey, Sr., said. “Those were father-son days.”

Dorsey’s lawyers portrayed him as a normal child growing up in a stable family who played and coached football. Dorsey played linebacker in high school in grade school, high school, two years at a small college in Ohio and helped his father coach.

Tiandra Cox, Larry Dorsey, Jr.’s fiancée, described him as “outgoing, funny, well-known, popular and interested in sports.”

Davis said he was her “best friend and boyfriend.”

“He was an amazing boyfriend, funny, charming, loving and kind,” she said.

Cox and Davis said after Dorsey dropped out of Wilmington College in Ohio, his personality began to change.

“He was more depressed, he told me he felt like he was spiraling and couldn’t get it together,” Cox said. “I think he felt his brothers were more successful.”

Davis, who was pursuing three graduate degrees at Indiana University at the time, said she broke off the relationship because “I felt like we were going in different directions.”

She said after Wilmington he was “more discouraged” and “deflated.”

“I didn’t want to keep dragging it out,” she said.

The trial before Superior Court Jude Mark Stoner resumes Tuesday and is expected to conclude Thursday.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at 317-444-6418 or email him at john.tuohy@indystar.com. Follow him on Facebook and X/Twitter

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Family tried to stop man charged with killing IMPD police officer