Co-workers scrambled to find missing pizza delivery man until the worst became clear

John Sullivan's night started out just like any other.

Just before 8 p.m. the 49-year-old Just Pizza delivery man donned his work uniform, picked up a fresh set of pizzas and stepped into his 2007 Silver Pontiac GS, ready to make a few drop-offs for hungry customers on a snowy Saturday evening.

Sometime after that Sullivan made it to the first stop on his list.

The second stop, though, would be his last.

Sullivan's body was found Sunday in the basement of a Westside house, 12 hours after he went missing. Although Indianapolis Metropolitan Police have not named anyone responsible for his death, they suspect foul play. They have released few details.

The house in the 1800 block of South Belmont Avenue, which also was being used as a dog shelter, was the second stop on Sullivan's pizza delivery list.

Justin Anthony Knapp, Sullivan's coworker at Just Pizza, said news of his death has stunned workers at the shop on West Washington Street, about 4 miles west of the spot where Sullivan's body was found.

"John was the last person I would have thought this would happen to," Knapp said. "It's completely insane."

Knapp said Sullivan worked on and off at the store and other food service places around the city for more than a decade. Sullivan returned to Just Pizza as a regular delivery man and pizza maker about three years ago after a successful battle against cancer, where he worked with his son, Scott Sullivan.

"He was an extremely hard worker," Knapp said. "Always very punctual, very trustworthy. Really reliable. He helped out a lot whenever we needed something."

Although Knapp said Sullivan didn't have an especially loud personality, he still managed to stand out. After losing much of his hair during his cancer-treatment process, Sullivan often wore bandanas patterned with flames or "mudflap girls," silhouettes of attractive women.

"He wore those two pretty much constantly," Knapp said, who added that Sullivan was also known for a festive personality around the holidays.

"Every Halloween, he had a fake arm hanging out the back of his truck. Every Thanksgiving, he would bring in a shrimp platter and vegetable platter to work."

Knapp said he and a few others were working Saturday night with Sullivan before he disappeared. When an order came in from the Belmont Avenue address, Knapp said the phone number was a long-distance line.

At the time, the crew didn't think anything of it. But after an hour or so, when Sullivan didn't report back to work, they knew something was wrong.

"The deliveries weren't back yet," Knapp said. Customers on Sullivan's route were calling in, saying they didn't get their deliveries. "I noticed John wasn't there."

What followed was a chaotic night for the crew at Just Pizza. Managers drove up and down Sullivan's routes, trying to find his car or some sign of where he might have disappeared to. They called towing companies and alerted police. At one point, the coworkers believed he might have been taken to Eskenazi Hospital with injuries. When they arrived, they learned it was a different person.

Within hours, the entire crew was out looking.

"Our manager had come back to the shop and said: 'We are going to shut down. We are just leaving now,'" Knapp said.

Since the crew knew Sullivan made his first delivery, Knapp said their suspicions landed on the Belmont Avenue house. They called the long-distance number; no one answered. During the hours after Sullivan's disappearance, Knapp and a few others stopped by the house and knocked on the door. No one answered.

"The lights were all on," Knapp said, but "the doors were locked. I wasn't going to kick down the doors."

Police said the house and a nearby barn were used to house dogs as part of a business called the All About Dogs Shelter. The two women who discovered Sullivan's body Sunday had stopped by to check on the dogs.

A phone call and email to one of the owners by The Indianapolis Star went unreturned Monday.

Police say no one was living in the house permanently.

Knapp said he made a few more fruitless attempts to track Sullivan down before returning home at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday.

"I ended up texting John's phone: 'If you want money, just text me when and where,'" Knapp said. He sent the same message to the long-distance number that had placed the original order.

"I never got a response from either phone, of course."

Sullivan was armed, Knapp said, and both his handgun and Pontiac GS are missing.

Although the circumstances behind Sullivan's death are still unclear, attacks on food delivery drivers aren't uncommon. In early 2013, a rash of armed robberies against pizza delivery drivers broke out across Indianapolis.

In one case last February, two drivers were robbed on the same night by two different groups of individuals armed with handguns.

Other times, the crimes are more serious. In 2011, a pizza driver in Bloomington was shot while trying to stop a car break-in.

"I feel a kind of fraternity as you do this kind of work," Knapp said, who also delivers Chinese food for a different company. On Sunday, he called his boss at that restaurant, telling her to "be safe" in the wake of Sullivan's death.

"I don't know what other businesses are going to do about this. It's so random and bizarre. You can't plan for something like this, you know?"

Anyone with information about this incident is urged to call IMPD at (317) 327-3475 or Crime Stoppers of Indiana at (317) 262-TIPS (8477).

Call Star reporter Bill McCleery at (317) 444-6083. Follow him on Twitter @BillMcCleery01.