INDIANAPOLIS — Police found a 19-year-old man shot and killed inside a house on the near northwest side of Indianapolis around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 20. The shots appear to have been fired just outside a window, right next door to a home day care.
There are bullet holes in the screen of an open window in the house in the 600 block of Udell Street, near West 29th and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. streets, where the man was found dead. The small space between homes makes it seem likely that someone stood at the window and fired shots into the house, shooting east.
Some of the bullets apparently went straight across the house. There are bullet holes on the east side of the house that track to bullet holes on the west side of the house next door.
That's where a 40-year-old woman was sleeping on her couch, awakened by gunfire.
"I couldn't breathe,” said the woman, who does not want to be identified. “I'm like, ‘Oh my God! Just help me. Just help me.’ That's all I kept saying. And help me, Lord. Thank God the bullets missed me."
The bullets missed her by inches. The bullets came through the wall of her house. One bullet ripped through the back cushion of her couch, a blanket and landed on her floor wrapped in couch stuffing. Another bullet lodged in the back of the couch, close to where her head rested.
“So if that bullet had come through this couch, it would have hit me dead in my head,” the woman said.
She's thankful that her three children were not staying with her Monday night.
"It's scary because I have kids that live here,” she said. “I got a 13-year-old that lives here. I got a 10-year-old, and I got a 4-year-old. And normally, if my 4-year-old had been here, he would have been with me."
She means the little boy would have been sleeping on the couch with her. Now, that couch has two bullet holes.
"I could have been dead, but I'm not,” she said. “I'm still here, breathing. So, if that's not a miracle work by God, I don't know what is. I'm so excited to still be here."
She’s also sickened that her neighbor was killed. He was also apparently sleeping on a couch in the house next door, where bullets apparently entered one side and exited the other.
The Marion County Coroner's Office identified the deceased as 19-year-old Jaleal Daeshawn Hurt.
Neighbors said he lived at the house with his sister.
The owner of the day care says she has between six and eight kids at her home during the week. She said she has been concerned about recent activity at the house next door and was not letting the children play outside. The day care was closed Tuesday because of the shooting investigation.