INDIANAPOLIS – A mother of two young children was killed Thursday morning in an apparent murder-suicide on the northwest side of Indianapolis.
It marked the third murder-suicide in Indianapolis in just over a week.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department was called to the Colonial Square Apartments on Moller Road around 8 a.m. Thursday, on reports of a person shot. Officers found a man and a woman dead. The man had been shot, and the woman had suffered trauma to her body.
Two guns were recovered at the scene. Investigators believe the man killed the woman before shooting himself.
Family members gathering outside the apartment identified the victim as 26-year-old Gyana Martin, who was studying to be a nurse and had just landed a dream job at IU Health.
“She was loving. She loved her kids,” Martin’s cousin Sharron Banks said.
IMPD said Martin’s two children were inside the apartment at the time. Neighbors and family said the kids ran next door for help after it happened.
The family said the man was a jealous ex-boyfriend and not the children’s father.
“She didn’t want him no more,” Banks said.
Danyette Smith, vice president of the Indianapolis Public Safety Foundation said this marks the ninth domestic violence homicide in Indianapolis over the last week, when including family and intimate partner violence.
“It’s devastating,” Smith said. “She wanted to get away. He wasn’t supposed to be here.”
IMPD Public Information Officer Tommy Thompson said it was a graphic scene. “I can’t imagine what children being present in a situation like this are going through.”
It’s the third murder-suicide in recent days, following an Oct. 14 shooting on the north side and a homicide involving a mother and her 9-year-old boy on Oct. 19.
Smith hopes this tragedy encourages others to seek help if they’re in a dangerous situation or having a mental health crisis.
“If you are going through domestic violence and you hear a no from a service agency, you don’t qualify, there is no space; please keep calling,” Smith said.
Now, family members are figuring out how to support two children whose mother was taken away from them.
“We love her,” Banks said. “And we’re going to take care of her babies.”
