Five people, unborn child killed in ‘act of mass murder’ in Indianapolis

Five people and an unborn child were found dead in Indianapolis on Sunday in what the city’s mayor called an act of mass murder.

Although the names and ages of the victims were not released and a motive was not immediately known, Mayor Joe Hogsett said the shooting had brought “terror to our community”.

“This morning the city of Indianapolis was the target of an act of depravity that has become all too common across the country and which will never cease to shock the conscience,” he told reporters.

Hogsett added that evidence gathered so far suggested the murders were unrelated to the “deadly confluence of guns, drug addiction and poverty” in Indianapolis, to which he said officials are ‘had been trying to remedy for years.

Police found the first victim, a young man, at around 4 a.m. local time with gunshot wounds in an area northeast of downtown Indianapolis, a police spokesperson said. to journalists. Officers then located the bodies of five people at a house less than half a mile away.

A pregnant woman was taken to a local hospital where she and her unborn child were pronounced dead, the spokesperson said. The juvenile had to survive.

It was not immediately clear how the victims were linked, although the head of the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, Randal Taylor, told reporters that the incident did not appear to be random.

No suspect had been identified, he said, and there may have been more than one shooter.