Music video, tattoos help IMPD ID suspects still at large after gas station shooting
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department this week was seeking the public’s help in finding four suspects in a late February gas station shooting.
The suspects are Traniesah Fennell, 21; Dejuan Jones, 22; Elijah Davis, 20; and Nathaniel Thompson, 23. The four are considered to be armed and dangerous.
Surveillance video of people making what they called a music video in the store helped police to identify the suspects from previous criminal investigations. Later, police found the music video on YouTube, and snips of the music video on an Instagram account of one of the suspects.
Tattoos on the suspects also helped police identify them from previous criminal investigations.
Police say officers were called to a report of shots fired around 10 p.m. Feb. 17 to the Phillips 66 at 3301 N. Shadeland Ave. That’s about a mile north of the I-70 interchange for Shadeland Avenue.
Around the same time, police were dispatched to Community East Hospital to investigate a person who walked in with gunshot wounds. That person later was taken to IU Health Methodist Hospital for treatment.
Investigators later confirmed that the incidents were connected, and that the person had been shot while outside the gas station.
Court documents say police found casings in the parking lot of the gas station. They also found bullet holes in a black 2006 Toyota Camry car with an Indiana license plate in the parking lot. The car belonged to an employee of the gas station.
The employee told police that “a few regulars” came into the store and asked to shoot a music video there. He told them they’d have to ask the manager. Eventually, another employee told them that the “regulars” could shoot their video.
About 10 to 15 men came into the store to shoot the video, the employee told police. The employee says the men began smoking, and he told them they’d have to leave the store or he was going to call the police. The men left and began shooting outside the store, the employee told police.
The owner of the gas station told a similar story about the shooting to investigators.
Anyone with information on the suspects’ whereabouts was asked to contact 911 immediately.