The Color Of Crime In Fort Wayne

The nearest city to where we live is Fort Wayne, Indiana. The outskirts of FW are about 15 minutes away but FW is a sprawling city that includes a lot of undeveloped/farm land as well as more traditional city and suburbia so I would have to drive quite a way to get into the “real” city. The city is named after General Anthony Wayne, so it has that in common with my high school alma mater, Anthony Wayne High School.

Fort Wayne is often cited as one of the most livable cities in the country as well as having one of the lowest cost of living in America. With a population of around a quarter of a million, FW is the second largest city in Indiana, a pretty distant second when compared to Indianapolis, with over 2 million people in her metropolitan area. It is a city with a less than happening night life but it is a great city if you have a family. In general we like it that way. However Fort Wayne also has it’s share of crime.

Demographically, Fort Wayne is like many American cities with a significantly shrinking white population, estimated at around 70% in 2010 compared to well over 85% in 1970. The black population of FW is around 15%, higher than the national average and significantly higher than Indiana as a whole. Keep this in mind.

Our local news did a report on every homicide in Fort Wayne in 2019: By the numbers: 2019 Allen County homicides . It is a pretty decent report, we have a fair number of murders in Fort Wayne, recording 29 in 2019 which is way down from the prior three years which all saw over 40. The report covers Allen County as a whole, which includes FW and I think almost all of the murders in 2019 happened in the city limits. We don’t get a lot of murders in Allen County east of Fort Wayne where over 3000 Amish live.

** Update 4/27/2020 **

A body was discovered in Woodburn, Indiana in October of 2019. The Allen County Coroner ruled today that the body was the victim of a homicide and called it the 30th homicide of 2019. The body has been identified as Ryan Baughman, who was reported missing in Fort Wayne in 2017. The coroner report stated that the remains had been in the woods “for at least six months”. He disappeared in Feburary of 2017, his last public Facebook post was a few months earlier and references his struggles with heroin.

I doubt he was missing from February of 2017 until 2019, given that he has a couple of children so even though the coroner lists his death as a 2019 homicide because that was when the body was discovered, it seems apparent that he was most likely killed early in 2017 so I am not including him in the 2019 statistics. No suspects have been arrested, Ryan was a white male.

****

What I want to try to figure out, and I haven’t even started as I type this, is to look at the race of the victim and where known the killer in all 29 cases. So let’s start looking one by one, following the order provided by WANE.

Tristan Tywan Norton Carter was the first murder of the year. According to our local paper, he was a 31 year old black male. No suspects, no arrests.

Carmen Hughes was next. She was 60 years old and died in an apparent domestic dispute as her son Cordell plead guilty to murdering her. She had been stabbed over 20 times. Cordell is black so I assume his mother is as well.

Demarcus Lontino Hale, Jr. was 18 when he was shot to death. As I assumed based on his name, he was a black male. No suspects, no arrests.

Felton Oneil Walker was shot in a home, apparently through the wall. A 23 year old black male. No suspects, no arrests.

Darius McMorris a 23 year old Chicago man shot to death in April. A man has been sentenced in his death, Antoine L. Kelley, Jr., a 28 year old black man. Allegedly Kelley had picked up McMorris and several other men to commit a robbery. Darius was a black male.

Michael Eugene LoVett Jr. was a 46 year old black man. He was killed by James Dodson, Jr., another black man, aged 34. Apparently LoVett, who owned a barber shop, and he and Dodson got into an “intense” argument during the haircut. Dodson left but then came back, was confronted by LoVett and shot him. LoVett shot back but apparently missed and died a short time later. I used to drive past that barber shop when I worked in downtown Fort Wayne.

Sally Ann Duncan-Sanders, a 75 year old white woman, was stabbed to death in May. A 61 year old man, Juan Jose Molina, was arrested for her murder. Based on his name and appearance, Mr. Molina is at least partly Hispanic.

**UPDATE** 

Mr. Molina plead guilty and was sentenced to 45 years. Since he is 62 that is pretty much all she wrote for him.

Shaquille Ihsan Kelly, a 26 year old black man, shot by police in the course of a vehicle pursuit. He crashed his car into a house, I mean way into the house, and was shot by the police when he apparently shot at the officers with a .45 caliber handgun, recovered at the scene. I’ll assume the shooting officer is white based on his name, Christopher Hawthorne. Hawthorne has shot and killed two people in the line of duty.

Korta Seon Queary, a 41 year old black man, shot to death in May. No suspects, no arrests.

**UPDATE**

An arrest has been made in the murder of Korta Seon Queary. A 24 year old black man, Trayvon Diquan Rogan, was arrested on January 28, 2020 and charged in connection with the murder. Numbers updated below.

Jarell Quenshawn Causey, a 30 year old black man, was stabbed to death, apparently by a white male who was the step-son of Mr. Causey. Reports indicate Mr. Causey was beating both the adult woman and the step-daughter, was confronted by the step-son and attacked him when the step-son defended himself and stabbed him to death. It doesn’t appear the step-son was arrested. A heart-warming family moment.

Arrianna Lee Henderson, a 20 year old black woman, was shot to death by a 26 year old black male, Leon Lumpkin.

Andre Paris Leslie, a 20 year old black man, was shot in a Wal-Mart parking lot in June. No arrests have been made but police did release a surveillance camera photo with a “person of interest” fleeing the scene, a young black male is pictured.

Frashaune Lamont Striverson, age 37, a black man if you couldn’t have guessed, shot to death in June. A 23 year old black man, Amiracle Phifer, has accepted a please deal in his murder.

**UPDATE**

On Friday, January 31st, 2020, the 23 year old shooter, Amiracle Phifer, was sentenced in the killing of Frashaune Striverson. He took a plea deal for voluntary manslaughter, which seems like an oxymoron although Mr. Phifer was also shot in the exchange, and received a sentence of 40 years. During the sentencing, Mr. Phifer had some words of wisdom that will unfortunately be entirely ignored by his community:

In court Friday, Phifer told the court he made a split-second decision that was “not appropriate.” He apologized to the victim’s family and his own.

Then Phifer issued to a warning: “to the other men out there…this just isn’t worth it.”

Not appropriate? Wearing black shoes and a brown belt isn’t appropriate. Murdering someone else? That is something entirely different. Still a pretty sad statement from a man who just received a sentence that will keep him in jail most of his life.

Jamarkus Allen Kindred, shot to death in July. I don’t even have to look it up but yes he was a 33 year old black man. No arrests but more surveillance video of people of interest, 2 black men and what I am guessing is a black woman.

Kenneth Rollingcloud, a 56 year old white/American Indian male, was shot to death. Mr. Rollingcloud has a lengthy criminal history involving drugs. No suspects, no arrests.

Lashonda Denise Eldridge,a 23 year old black woman, shot to death in her car while two children were with her. The car was in an alleyway, no suspects, no arrests.

Sean Lee Jordan, aged 38, stabbed to death. Sean was a black man, no suspects, no arrests in his murder.

Kennedy Janae Laramore, a 21 year old black woman, stabbed to death during an apparent melee between multiple people. 55 year old black male Robert Dale Littlejohn was arrested in her murder.

Corey Appleberry, a 29 year old black male, was shot by a family member. The shooter was questioned but apparently never arrested or named but it is a safe guess that since Mr. Appleberry was black, so was his family member.

Jaylin L. Robinson was shot at a bar in September. He was a 24 year old black male. A 22 year old black male, Michael Anderson, Jr. who was already in jail, has been charged in the shooting.

O’sha D.K. Booher-Ford, a 26 year old black man, was stabbed to death, apparently by his girlfriend, 27 year old black female  Lakeshia James. Sounds like O’sha was cheating on her, they argued about it and she stabbed him to death. She is facing multiple charges including murder.

Pablo Guzman Vasquez, a 40 year old Hispanic man, was shot to death in October. A black man, 40 year old Jermaine Turner, was arrested. It sounds like Turner had been hired to rob someone else, got the wrong guy and ended up killing him. Oops!

Dominic Andrew Price, a 26 year old black man, was shot to death in October. The shooting stemmed from an altercation, an unnamed person of interest was questioned but no arrests have been made.

Da’Coldest Antromik King Johnson was a 5 month old black male baby who died of “traumatic head injuries”. His mother was arrested, Jasmine Johnson, a 30 year old black woman. She admitted to drinking the night before his death and said she just found him dead on the floor. The evidence indicates blood all over the place and depressions in his skull, so it sounds like she beat him to death.

Stacy Jennings, aka “Raina Swopshire”, a 49 year old black woman, was stabbed to death in perhaps the weirdest murder last year. Police arrested her daughter, a 24 year old black woman Kennishewa Whitley. Apparently mom was smoking crack and decided to grope her daughter. Yes, that kind of groping. Gross. Anyway, they fought, mom threw a knife at her and missed, came at the daughter with a different knife, which was wrestled away by the daughter who then “just started swinging”. What the actual eff?

Dominique N. Taylor, an 18 year old was shot to death in December. Ms. Taylor appears to be of mixed race so I am counting her as black. No arrests or suspects, police are unsure if she was the target or was hit by stray bullets.

**UPDATE**

An arrest has been made in the murder of Dominique Taylor. A 16 year old black man, Senaca James, has been charged in her killing. Numbers updated below.

Daniel Mendez-Lopez, a 32 year old Hispanic man, and his brother, Alfonso Mendez-Lopez, a 26 year old Hispanic male, were both murdered on the Christmas Eve. A third Hispanic man, Pedro Lopez, has been arrested for their murders.

Larry Montreal Briggs, a 27 year old black man, was the 29th and final homicide victim in 2019. He was shot to death, as of this morning there are no suspects and no arrests have been made.

OK, so that is pretty grim.

I was able to figure out the race of all 29 victims.

24 homicide victims were black, 18 male and 6 female. 

That includes Shaquille Ihsan Kelly, shot in what was apparently a justified shooting by a cop.

3 of the victims were Hispanic men.

1 was a white female

1 was a white male, and he was at least partially American Indian.

In a city that is around 15% black, almost 83% of homicide victims in 2019 were black.

When it comes to perpetrators, we have less data. I am assuming the race of the killer in some cases based on reasonable conjecture and/or surveillance photos. We are reasonably sure of the identity of 18 of the 29 killers in 2019.

13 known killers were black men

3 known killers were black women

2 known killers were Hispanic men

1 known killer was a white male

1 known killer was a cop

Of 20 known killers, 16 were black or 84%. Two were Hispanic and have been arrested. One was a white male and apparently was not arrested as he killed his “victim” in self-defense/defense of his mother and sister. One killer was a cop and his shooting was found justified. So taking those two out, of 18 traditional murders where the killer is known, around 89% of known killers were black (the other two were mestizos) and statically speaking the percentage of blacks perpetrators is probably much higher, likely over 95%. This is in a city where the black population is only around 15%. This makes sense as statistically speaking:

– Most murders are intraracial and 83% of homicide victims in Fort Wayne in 2019 were black.

– In cases of interracial murder, blacks are account for about 90% of violent crime toward whites.

So what does that mean?

Looking specifically at one smaller city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, reconfirms what we generally know about crime in the U.S.. It is overwhelmingly committed by non-whites and blacks are vastly over-represented when it comes to murder in particular, as well as all other violent crime. Again, it is worth noting that unlike cities like Detroit, Baltimore and St. Louis, Fort Wayne has a very small black population and still blacks commit around 90+% of all murders.

This fact is also rarely reported. When a white cop shoots a black person, regardless of how clearly justified, it makes the national news. When blacks kill someone, no one seems to care, even when it is a “mass shooting” and especially when the victims, as they are so often, are other blacks. Racial crime statistics are hard to find these days, requiring a great deal of digging like I just did. When you bring these statistics up that show that blacks or African-Americans or “people of color” or whatever are disproportionately the victims and perpetrators of violent crime, you are either accused of lying or of being racist for noticing, usually accompanied by some excuses for why black people can’t help but commit crimes.

Our little local city of Fort Wayne is a pretty safe place, in spite of 29 murders in 2019, as long as you aren’t black. A white person who lives outside of the southeast neighborhoods where most of the black residents live and where most crime occurs, is essentially in zero danger of being murdered in Fort Wayne. The two white people killed in 2019, one being an American Indian, were killed after giving a Hispanic guy a ride home in one case or were lifelong drug users and criminals. Regular middle class whites were completely off the board. So were Asians in spite of Fort Wayne having the largest Burmese population in the U.S.

You could do this same exercise in any city in the U.S. and come up with the same results. In California or Texas, states with very large Hispanic populations, the proportion of Hispanic victims and killers would go up but the dirty little secret of violent crime in America, especially murder and especially, especially “gun violence” is that it is mostly a non-white problem. This seems odd since most “solutions” proposed to violent crime and “gun violence” involve taking firearms away from law abiding, mostly white, citizens who aren’t the problem in the first place.

If you are looking for a new place to live, you can’t go wrong with Fort Wayne, Indiana, especially if you are white or Asian.