Five people, unborn child killed in ‘act of mass murder’ in Indianapolis

Five people and an unborn child were found dead Sunday in Indianapolis in what the city’s mayor called an act of mass murder.

Though the names and ages of the victims had not been released and a motive wasn’t immediately known, Mayor Joe Hogsett said the shooting had brought “terror to our community.”

“This morning the city of Indianapolis was targeted with an act of depravity that has become all too common across the country and will never cease to shock the conscience,” he told reporters.

Hogsett added that evidence gathered so far suggested the killings were not linked to the “deadly confluence of guns, substance abuse and poverty” in Indianapolis that he said officials had been working to address for years.

Police found the first victim, a juvenile male, around 4 a.m. local time suffering from gunshot wounds in an area northeast of downtown Indianapolis, a police spokesman told reporters. Officers later found the bodies of five people at a home less than half a mile away.

A pregnant woman was taken to a local hospital where she and her unborn child were pronounced dead, the spokesman said. The juvenile was expected to survive.

It wasn’t immediately clear how the victims were connected, though Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Chief Randal Taylor told reporters that the incident didn’t appear to be random.

No suspect had been identified, he said, and there was possibly more than one shooter.