Police identify man shot to death on the Northeastside

Sunday night, when Tony Latimore sat in his buddy's car, he would've never guessed that the next time he'd see him would by lying in the snow, dead.

"Words can't describe this," Latimore said, standing at the police tape in the 2500 block of Caroline Avenue, trying to make out the body of the man, later identified as 19-year-old Devonzae Jones, less than 20 yards away. "This is messed up. I just talked to him last night. We was just in his car last night."

Police responded to a report of a person shot on the city's Northeastside around 10:30 p.m Monday. When officers arrived, they found Jones, Latimore's friend from back in grade school, suffering from at least one gunshot wound.

EMS pronounced the victim dead a short time later, police said. Little more was said about the events surrounding the shooting.

As IMPD's homicide unit began processing the scene and talking to witnesses, members of the victim's family began arriving and holding one another as they inched their way toward the police tape. Caroline Avenue, at least between 25th and 26th Streets, was a sheet of ice, and more than one person slipped and fell on their way to join their loved ones.

While some stood in tears, others turned angry, asking police why they weren't covering up the victim's body. Why didn't they care? Even after IMPD officers explained that the scene had to be preserved, that preservation was the "greatest sign of respect," as one officer put it, a woman in the crowd shouted, "They don't care about him."

Another person cried, "They just taking everybody's son. They don't care."

But the anger wasn't only directed at police. A woman, pacing back and forth at the tape, said she was sick of the media telling stories about young black men being shot and killed and then pouring through their criminal records and posting their mugshots along with the story of their death.

Latimore, on the other hand, barely said anything. He was in shock.

"That's just the way people is nowadays," he said.

Call Star reporter Michael Anthony Adams at (317) 444-6123. Follow him on Twitter: @MichaelAdams317.