Court records are providing new details about what led to the deadly shooting of a 15-year-old girl in Indianapolis, Indiana, according to reports.
According to previous reports, Janiya Carr was found dead at an apartment complex on the northeast side of Indianapolis on Wednesday.
34-year old Tevis Walker was arrested in relation to the fatal shooting on Thursday evening.
Just before noon on Wednesday, a woman walking her dog found a teenage girl dead along a tree line behind the Carriage House East apartments.
When the body was found, IMPD, along with medics, were dispatched to the scene, court documents said. Officials said that the body, which was later identified as Carr, had a bullet wound in her right cheek and trauma to the back of her head. Carr had been listed as a runaway on October 28.
Carr died just a few weeks shy of her 16th birthday.
“I feel empty. I feel confused. I have so many emotions. I feel sick,” said the victim’s mother Demetria Boston.
According to court records police used surveillance video to piece together a minute by minute timeline in the case.
Police claim at exactly 4:32 a.m. on October 28th, cameras on Newburgh Drive showed Carr getting into a Kia registered to Walker.
Less than an hour later, at 5:21am, another camera shows the Kia drive into the grass and turn off it’s lights in the spot where police found Carr’s body.
“The lights of (the) vehicle go off,” the documents read. “Movement can be seen, but the view is not clear.”
Four minutes later, at 5:25am, police said Walker parked the Kia in the parking lot, then walked into his apartment just a few hundred feet from the scene.
Walker had recently been hired as a maintenance man for the apartment complex, despite the fact that he had several warrants for his arrest in Georgia and Alabama.
“This could have been avoided had they done a thorough background check,” said Boston. “He shouldn’t have working here. He had a warrant.”
In an interview that IMPD reportedly conducted with Walker, Walker confirmed with police that the Kia Optima was his, and he was the only one who operated it. Walker also told police he remembered picking up a girl and drove her to a location several miles east to purchase a tablet. Walker said that the person he was purchasing the tablet from did not show up and Walker returned Carr back to the apartment complex.
Police did not provide a motive for the killing.
“But the torture of what he did to my baby is stuck in my head. I can’t sleep,” said Boston.
Walker was arrested on preliminary charges of murder and was transported to jail by an IMPD wagon. The suspect is being held without bond pending the filing of formal charges.
The apartment management sent a written statement that read:
“The Gene B. Glick Company was shocked and deeply saddened by the fatal shooting of Janiya Carr, a teenage resident of Carriage House East in Indianapolis. We mourn with her family and friends and our entire Carriage House East community over this senseless tragedy.
We are aware that a Carriage House East employee has been arrested for this crime. Throughout its investigation, we, including our community’s private security force, comprised of off-duty IMPD officers, have been working closely with and providing information to IMPD and their detectives and investigators. We will continue to actively assist and cooperate with the investigation, but we cannot provide any further details at this time which may impact or impede the ongoing investigation.”
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