INDIANAPOLIS — IMPD is investigating the city's 200th homicide of the year after a shooting on Friday, Oct.1, left one man dead and another person injured.
Officers were called to the 1100 block of North Oxford Street, near 10th and North Rural streets, just before midnight after someone reported the sound of gunfire.
Police found two people with gunshot wounds in a car. A man, later identified as 24-year-old Dylan McGinnis, was pronounced dead at the scene. IMPD said the second victim, a woman, was taken to a hospital, but her condition was not known.
This shooting is, unfortunately, becoming all too familiar for Indianapolis residents. More people are being shot in the city than ever before.
The city's 200th homicide of 2021 comes almost a month ahead of that mark last year, which happened Oct. 27, 2020.
Metro police investigated 215 criminal homicides in 2020, an increase of nearly 39% from the year before.
Plus, the number of homicides has doubled over the last decade, starting in 2012 when criminal homicides soared from 96 that year to 125 in 2013.
The number of homicides continued to climb in the years that followed with every year being a record-breaking year except for 2017, when there were two fewer lives lost than in the year prior, and in 2019, when there were five fewer lives lost than in 2018.
This year, Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett laid out plans to make sure this year wasn't a repeat of last year.
Hogsett's 2021 crime reduction plan includes changes to IMPD, such as creating violence reduction teams and implementing interruption, intervention and prevention programs.
The City-County Council also dedicated $3 million toward finding solutions to the recent spike in deadly shootings, and Hogsett introduced a $1.3 billion budget that adds more money to try to curb violent crime.
"We are also adding 100 new sworn officers to the streets," Hogsett said. "At the same time, we are adding dozens of civilian police officers who can respond to non-emergency situations so that sworn officers can focus like a laser on the areas of the city they are charged with the responsibility to patrol."
Still, violence is increasing across the board.
According to the Domestic Violence Network, in 2018 and 2019, guns were used in 65% of domestic violence-related homicides. That number increased to 73% in 2020.
As city leaders work to lower criminal homicides and other violent crimes, the community is hoping to avoid yet another record-breaking year.
Police investigating the 200th homicide on Oxford Street are asking anyone with information about the shooting to call Detective Stephen Smalley at the IMPD Homicide Office at 317-327-3475 or email him at Stephen.Smalley@indy.gov.