Two kids were shot in the parking lot at Warren Central High School in Indianapolis on Friday night, minutes after one of the biggest high school football games in the state. A boy was in serious condition and a girl was stable, according to Indianapolis Metropolitan Police. As of Saturday morning, police hadn’t made an arrest or released a suspect description.
Warren Central had just beaten Lawrence North 53-37 to stay unbeaten. Players and coaches from both teams were told to stay in their locker rooms until officers cleared them to leave.
What happened after the Warren Central game?
Warren Township school police called IMPD around 10:35 p.m. to report shots fired near the school at 9500 E. 16th St. Officers found a boy with a gunshot wound, then found a girl who’d also been shot. Both were taken to hospitals.
The game was broadcast live on MyINDY-TV 23. The shots were loud enough to be picked up on audio while a reporter was interviewing Warren Central running back Keyon Thomas, an Iowa commit who ran for nearly 400 yards in the win, Yahoo Sports reported.
What do police know about the shooting?
Not much, publicly. IMPD Capt. Don Weilhammer said police didn’t know whether the boy and girl were students at local schools. Their ages and names haven’t been released. Investigators said they didn’t immediately know what led to the shooting or who fired.
IMPD is asking anyone with information to come forward. Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana takes anonymous tips at 317-262-8477. The Metropolitan School District of Warren Township didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment, and the district is scheduled for a break next week.
Has this happened at Indianapolis school games before?
Yes, and with one of the same schools involved. In December 2023, shots were fired in the parking lot at Lawrence Central High School after a boys basketball game against Lawrence North. Nobody was hurt that time. Police arrested a 15-year-old charged with possessing a machine gun and a 14-year-old charged with having a gun on school property. The district said the shooter didn’t attend its schools.
It’s part of a pattern that keeps showing up on BeezLoop: twelve teenagers were shot at a Macon park last weekend. In both cases, the guns showed up where kids gather on a weekend night. Schools are dealing with the threat side too: two teens were arrested in separate school shooting threat cases in Kentucky and Massachusetts.
The BeezLoop Take
Friday night football is supposed to be the safest crowd in town. Parents, grandparents, little kids in face paint. Two teenagers getting shot in the parking lot after the final whistle is exactly the kind of thing that makes families stop going, and that loss is real even when nobody dies.
What schools can control is the game. What they can’t control is a teenager with a gun in a parking lot after it ends, and that’s where these shootings keep happening. Metal detectors at the gate don’t reach the lot. That points back to the question nobody in Indiana’s statehouse wants to take up: how a kid gets a handgun in the first place, in a state that dropped its permit requirement for adults in 2022.
Police deserve some patience. It’s been less than a day, and post-game crowds make for confused witnesses. But IMPD and Warren Township owe families a clear answer before the next home game about what security will look like in that parking lot.
The question for this weekend: will someone who saw it come forward?
Sources: WISH-TV · Yahoo Sports · Hoosier Enquirer · WISH-TV, Dec. 2023
[…] It was the second time Friday night that teenagers were shot leaving a crowded weekend event. A few hours earlier in Indianapolis, two kids were shot in the parking lot after a high school football game in Indianapolis. […]