Police identify man slain at apartment complex shooting

Michael Anthony Adams, michael.adams@indystar.com
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department is investigating a fatal shooting at Blackburn Terrace Apartments, Wednesday, June 29, 2016.

INDIANAPOLIS — The man’s body lay in the grass as the last hour of sunlight spread across the Blackburn Terrace apartments.

Residents of the complex gathered on the basketball court, staring through black, metal bars of a fence that separated them from the body. Some pressed their faces up against the bars to get a better look, others stood back in small groups, talking low.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers had been called to the complex shortly after 8 p.m. Shots had been fired, the caller said. But as officers approached the apartments, they were updated that someone had possibly been shot.

When they arrived, police found a man, later identified as Phillip Brown, 25, lying on his back, blood pooling in the dirt near his head.

Brown was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.

Crime lab technicians came to process the scene. They drove their vans up onto the grass and across the basketball court to get as close as they could to the Brown’s body.

The streets in Blackburn Terrace are narrow, making it hard, not only for crime lab vans, but police to get to the center of the complex quickly, IMPD Deputy Chief Valerie Cunningham said.

Officers did their best, Cunningham said, to tape off the scene and keep potential witnesses from walking away, but it did little to help the investigation.

"Unfortunately, and frustratingly, as we continue to face here in the city, we are not getting anyone to say that they saw anything or heard anything," Cunningham said. "There are numerous people out, right in the center of an apartment complex. Still daylight hours. Someone had to see something, and we need their assistance."

As crime lab techs worked to process the scene, a woman, who said she was the Brown's sister, stood between the crowd and the fence and pleaded with the bystanders to speak up if they saw something. When no one said anything, she became angry, echoing Cunningham's frustration that investigators were "getting zero cooperation" from the community.

Earlier this month, IMPD Chief Troy Riggs said there were signs that the "no-snitch" culture was shifting, telling IndyStar that the department was beginning "to see that code of silence break down somewhat."

The reluctance of residents at Blackburn Terrace to speak up, however, emphasizes just how difficult it is to change that way of thinking.

In fact, one of the Brown's cousins said this wasn't the first time the man had been shot. He said Brown had been shot a few weeks ago in the leg, and still had a brace around his calf.

By the time the Marion County coroner came to collect the body, it was nearly full dark. Soon after, an Indianapolis Fire Department engine rolled across the basketball court, snaked a hose through the fence, and washed away the blood.

This story will be updated.

Call IndyStar reporter Michael Anthony Adams at (317) 444-6123. Follow him on Twitter: @michaeladams317.