INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – The early morning of January 14, 2008, in the 3200 block of Hovey Street on the city’s north side was stone cold for several reasons.
One was the bone chilling frost of a mid-winter night.
The other was the point-blank killings of two women and two babies inside a house where intruders thought they would find money and drugs.
Andrea Yarrell and five-month-old Charlii were shot to death inside the house, the baby in her mother’s arms.
Gina Hunt and her nearly two-year-old son Jordan were dead, too, the toddler’s body showing gunpowder residue of close range gunfire.
Lesley Yarrell had visited the house the day before to retrieve one daughter and tell Andrea she needed to leave, too.
“She told me the address and when I seen the house I said, ‘Oh, no, you come with me now and, Andrea, I really don’t want you over here,’ because I knew what was going on through there because I knew the guy.”
The address on Hovey Street was a known stash house and its owner had an extensive criminal record.
Gina Hunt had been babysitting Andrea’s daughter earlier that night and Lesley Yarrell said his child promised him that last time they spoke that she, too, would be leaving.
Ronald Davis, Jasper Frazier, Donte Hobson and Zarumin Coleman thought they would find 50 pounds of pot and cash in the house and two women who wouldn’t put up a fight.
Tommy Warren helped plan the robbery which began with the crew traveling house-to-house in the vicinity of 16th Street and College Avenue collecting guns and explaining their plan.
“Tommy Warren…he lived right down the street from my mother, they grew up together and stuff like that and basically he had told so much,” said Yarrell, “and then we had told the police about Tommy Warren and stuff.”
Davis and Frazier broke a window to enter the house, threatening the terrified women huddling with their children and professing no knowledge of drugs and cash in a safe.
Frazier told an Indianapolis Star reporter Davis did the killing.
Within days, the men were in custody just as then-IMPD Deputy Chief Bill Benjamin promised Yarnell, “before you put your daughter in the ground.”
“It seems like the other day to me,” said Yarrell. “That’s a piece of my heart…”
Davis was called “Action” and his gun was fired ten times that night, though he claimed Frazier did the shooting.
“Action” received a 245-year prison sentence. The other killers come up for parole in the next five to 25 years. Warren’s been in and out of prison and may be out again this summer.
Yarrell said he’s forgiven his daughter and granddaughter’s killers, though he would like to meet the triggerman in prison.
“That Ronald Davis guy. He acted like he didn’t care. He had no remorse,” said Yarrell. “Why would you kill some innocent kids and stuff like that and two innocent ladies?”
Yarrell is dismayed on the tenth anniversary of the Hovey Street killings to realize what should have been a violent low point for the city has been surpassed time again by even more brutal and senseless murders and that the slayings of women and children are no longer off limits.
“I’m letting the parents know, if you don’t want to go through the stuff I’m going through, you would cooperate with the cops and stuff like that because all this killing needs to stop.
“It’s a hard world out here now,” he said. “Let the police do their work because you don’t wanna go through what I spent ten long years which you don’t want to go through what I’m going through.”
