Neighbors fed up as gun violence brings unwanted bullet holes to family’s east side home

INDIANAPOLIS — East side neighbors are fed up with violence on their street after a house was sprayed with bullets following an apparent shootout.

It’s not the first time the home has been hit with bullets, and now residents want to move away from the area.

What sounded like a loud banging at a door turned out to be gunshots that woke up neighbors outside a home in the 800 block of Drexler Avenue.

“I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming it, and then all of a sudden I shot up, looked at my phone and saw it was 5:20, and then I saw the neighbor’s alert five minutes later,” said Sophia Saleh, a neighbor in the area.

The family was home sleeping when they heard the gunfire. They didn’t want to go on camera, but the father tells me his wife got up to use the bathroom. When she came back, that’s when the gunfire started. He said he immediately went to protect his two kids and wife as they ducked for cover.

“This is much more extensive than anything I’ve ever dealt with,” said Ethan Hatcher, landlord of the property. “It went through a closet door, it went through the front door, went through bedroom door, went through trim, went through at least a dozen windows.”

Hatcher has owned the property since 2020, and while he’s had his fair share of issues, he’s experienced nothing like this. 

“It’s hard to hold your head high and do the right thing and fix up these properties and put the money into them to make them a nice and attractive place to live when this city is so rough,” said Hatcher. “It’s just going to get shot up and your hard work is going to be destroyed. It’s disheartening.”

IMPD doesn’t have any suspects in this case and have made no arrests. They stress people must solve their conflicts without putting innocent people in danger.

“Whatever was going on, they decided to play out this argument and it escalated to this level of violence amongst houses where children were sleeping,” said Drew Brown, public information officer for IMPD. “This is unacceptable behavior, absolutely unacceptable behavior to take your arguments to a level of violence where you’re pulling the trigger against somebody and do it in a place that is entirely unacceptable for gunfire to ring out.”

The family said they plan on moving away from the area because they don’t feel safe. That doesn’t bode well for Hatcher.

“It doesn’t do me any good because now it’s going to have a reputation as being an unsafe house,” said Hatcher. “This is supposed to be a quiet neighborhood, you know, on a stretch right next to 10th Street. A lot of homeowners around here, it’s supposed to be safe, and then that illusion has been shattered.”