Veteran IMPD detective remembers attempts to save Richmond Hill victim
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (WISH) – “We’ve got one trapped in a home that is burning.”
The radio traffic from a veteran IMPD homicide detective the night of the Richmond Hill explosion is difficult to hear.
IMPD detective Shawn Looper lives in the neighborhood, and he jumped into his car to respond almost immediately after he heard and felt the explosion that November night. At the time, he was a detective with the child abuse unit.
He told jurors he drove over to the scene from his home, and he started communicating with other first responders via radio. Jurors heard some of those breathless radio transmissions. At first, the officer thought there had been a plane crash. Then, he relayed over the radio that there had been an explosion. He worked to help injured residents and others get out of the neighborhood and get help.
Later, jurors heard the obviously upset radio traffic, as the detective tried to get closer to the home where victim Dion Longworth was trapped.
“We’ve got one trapped in a home that is burning,” the recording of the radio traffic said. “We’ve got a man trapped in the back here. He’s screaming.”
“Need a hose in the rear, I’m going to lose a fireman,” he said again.
After the radio traffic stopped, a silence in the courtroom.
The detective slowly described the scene he had encountered. He told jurors that he had seen a fireman kneeling, trying to pull something from the back of a home near the epicenter of the explosion. The firefighter tried waving the officer over to help, but the detective couldn’t get there – he said the fire was too hot.
The officer paused on the witness stand, visibly upset. Then, he answered why he couldn’t get near the firefighter to help.
“Due to the intensity of the fire,” he said, after a moment of silence, trying to collect himself.
Jurors heard from nearly two dozen Richmond Hill residents Wednesday as testimony in the trial against Mark Leonard entered its second day.
- FULL COVERAGE | Read more about the Richmond Hill explosion and criminal cases
Leonard is accused of plotting, along with others, to blow up his girlfriend’s home in November 2012 for insurance money. The explosion killed two people, Dion and Jennifer Longworth, and damaged or destroyed more than 80 homes.
The blast was like “something I remember from Afghanistan,” said one Richmond Hill neighbor Wednesday morning.
Neighbor Walter Colbert told jurors he was sleeping at the time of the explosion, when he heard a “huge explosion, percussion, it woke me up out of my sleep.”
Colbert said he had served overseas and said at that moment, he “sort of had a flashback.” He said it was “something I remember from Afghanistan.” He equated it to the moment a 2,000 pound IED went off and shook their entire post.
For a second he added, he didn’t really know where he was. Then, he said, he saw his son and realized he was home.
Colbert described driving down to where the explosion happened and “saw what appeared to be a white cloud, from south to north.”
He said when he got to Fieldfare Way, where explosion occurred, “it was eerily quiet, and this big hole was down where some houses used to be.”
He described then helping to search homes, getting other neighbors out. At one point he realized his neighbor’s son’s face was covered in blood, and he helped them out before eventually evacuating the neighborhood.
Jurors also saw a video taken on another neighbor’s cell phone. Amy Clark said she turned on her cell phone to take video as she ran down the street toward the explosion. In it, jurors saw a dark night, moving with Clark’s steps, with a small fire in the background. You could see insulation littering the sidewalk. You could hear the confusion as Clark ran toward the explosion. She said “It’s so dark.” She added, “My god, they can’t get out,” “Oh my god look.”
Jurors could also see a small fire with a bluish tint in the video and could hear screaming and panic from neighbors. They also heard someone screaming about a gas line and to get back. In the end, before she shut it off, Clark says, “What? How?”
Other neighbors described similar moments directly after the explosion.
Jeffrey Cross described it as “the loudest sound I’ve ever heard in my life, things around me were blowing off walls, falls off walls.. it was so loud I thought something had exploded inside my own house.”
“You could see a huge fireball in the sky, and smoke, it was almost like daylight, how bright it was,” said Ninette LaRouche.
“Nothing made sense in that chaotic, couple minutes after the blast,” said neighbor Matt Lennon.
“There was a horrific flash, deafening sound, one of the scariest things I’ve gone through in my entire life,” said Janet Lindgren. She said she thought a bomb had gone off.
“It was bad, like a war zone, I’d imagine,” said Bryan McClellan.
Cindy Hinds also paused to compose herself on the witness stand, as she described what she saw as she ran outside.
“All I could hear were people screaming for help,” she said.
Hinds described leaving the neighborhood, hours later finding out at her father’s home that a friend and she “had blood all over us.” Hours later, they also realized there was a large cut on their dog’s leg, that required a $750 dollar surgery.
Hinds also spoke about the emotional toll the tragedy has taken on their family.
“Physically we were okay, but my son struggled, for a couple months,” she explained, saying he “had to sleep on our floor,” and “wouldn’t come home after school by himself.”
She said, “It’s been hard on him, really hard.”
Neighbor Kirk McDonald also testified Wednesday. He told the jury what he had heard, and how he, his son and his nephew ran down the street after the explosion. He said they saw a house that was leveled, then they heard people yelling for help.
They’d found the Olveys, neighbors who lived just north of Monserrate Shirley’s home, that had exploded. The family of four was trapped inside their home. McDonald said they helped a younger daughter with a head injury, got an older daughter out, then they saw a pile on the floor of debris. They realized the father of the family was in there, and helped him out. Then, they helped rescue a woman who was trapped in a recliner, just as the siding of the home caught on fire.
A firefighter from Lawrence also told jurors he’d helped the McDonalds in getting the Olvey family out.
As each neighbor came to the witness stand to testify, they colored in yellow their home on a map showing the neighborhood. Slowly, the yellow areas have increased. Jurors also saw photos of the damage from each of the neighbors’ homes as well.
“That personal touch is something the jury needs to understand the magnitude of this,” said Marion County Deputy Prosecutor Denise Robinson. “Not necessarily on lives, that’s nothing something the state needs to prove. But the state needs to show there was this degree of devastation, there was this degree of damage, and the personal stories assist the jury in understanding that.”
Neighbors described, throughout the day, the damage. Most said their front doors were blown in or out, their garage doors were crumpled, and items on the walls or on mantles were torn or blown off. Others described major structural damage to the home, one saying their fireplace was separated from the wall, others adding their home needed to be gutted before it was repaired.
“These residents have a story to tell. And they should be heard,” said Robinson.
One juror was excused after a family tragedy on Wednesday morning.
Tuesday, jurors heard from veteran firefighters who were among the first to arrive to the scene. They also heard audio from the radio traffic as firefighters worked to rescue victim Dion Longworth who was trapped in his home. Along with some of the hundreds of 911 calls that flooded Marion County 911 after the explosion that November night.