Indianapolis public housing rocked by second murder of the year

INDIANAPOLIS — The body of a 24-year-old woman suffering trauma was found in an abandoned apartment at 16 Park, an Indianapolis Housing Agency property, Sunday night.

It was the second killing this year on IHA property after the dismissal of its police force in December.

Sunday’s victim had been reported missing by her family just three hours before her body was found.

”The only person I’ve ever seen was a tall lady, she had like a daughter that was like a toddler and a man who comes out of there all the time,” said a neighbor.

“How would the police know to come to that vacant apartment and find a dead lady there?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said the young woman, afraid to give her name for fear of apartment management retaliation. “Somebody had to call, somebody had to say something.”

The door to 1667 North Park Avenue remained open today and neighbors said that’s part of the problem.

“There was a family that lived in there a couple years ago then they moved out,” said a neighbor. “Now there’s a lot of people that don’t necessarily live here but they just stay in there because they have nowhere else to go.

”We hear a whole bunch of banging. We hear a whole bunch of music late at night.

”A lot of people around here have told management but the management does nothing about it. They act like they really don’t care.”

After decades of mismanagement, missing revenue and slumping occupancy rates, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development took over IHA nearly a year ago, dissolving its board, laying off and demoting staff, separating from its private property management firm and falling behind payments to vendors, Section 8 rent payments to landlords and resident recertifications all while struggling to recover and relaunch its computer system after a pair of hacks crippled agency communications and recordkeeping.

IHA’s new executive director Yvonda Bean starts Tuesday.

“There’s a lot of people that just like to go into abandoned apartments and stuff,” said the neighbor. ”They need to go out and look at these apartments and clean them up.”

On Jan. 11 — one month after the IHA police chief and officers were laid off and it was announced a private security firm would be engaged to protect IHA properties and residents —Deandra Clay Staples, 14, was found shot to death at Laurelwood Apartments, an IHA complex on the city’s southside.

”There’s no security,” said the 16 Park neighbor. “When we first moved in here in 2015 there was but now there’s not.”

There was no response from IHA to an email requesting answers to the neighbors’ concerns.