Teen on west side facing murder charge

Police say shots were fired from second-floor window

A teenager is facing a murder charge after firing shots from his second-story bedroom at a man who was burglarizing cars in a neighborhood on the west side of Indianapolis, court records read.

Terry Ross, 18, was killed in the shooting around 6:30 a.m. Aug. 23. Two bullet wounds were found in Ross’ back. He was not armed and had not tried to enter any homes before the shooting, according to investigators.

“He just started hanging around the wrong group of people and got into bad things,” said Dyllon Wales, a close friend of Ross. “He wanted to get help and get out of it, but he didn’t get enough help before this happened.”

Wales went to middle school and Decatur Central High School with Ross. Ross didn’t deserve what happened to him and should have had more time to get back on track, Wales said.

“Terry was someone you could talk about anything with,” Wales said. “He gave really good advice and I could talk to him for hours without getting bored. He always stuck up for me.”

Ross had at least one stepbrother and many close friends he considered siblings who will miss him, Wales said.

The shooting

Officers called to the 7100 block of

Pluto Drive on a report of a person shot found Ross in the front yard of a home. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

An officer spotted what appeared to be bullet holes in the second story front window of a nearby home and investigators knocked on the door. A teenager eventually answered.

The teen was later identified as Gabriel Hernandez, 16. He was charged as an adult with murder and dangerous possession of a firearm in the shooting.

The teen led investigators upstairs to the room with bullet holes in the window. Hernandez told police that his mother woke him up then he checked cameras at their home to see a man wearing a ski mask and hoodie breaking into cars, according to the probable cause affidavit for Hernandez’s arrest.

The teen’s mother stated she woke to an alert from the home’s security camera. She woke up her son because she was scared then he retrieved a gun, she said.

“He (Hernandez) shoot two, two times I think,” the mother told police in the affidavit. A firearm and two fired cartridge casings were found in the bedroom with the windows that had bullet holes, according to investigators.

Hernandez and his mother were transported to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department’s homicide offices for interviews, and both declined to make additional statements.

An attorney for Hernandez did not immediately return a request for comment before publication of this article.