Three Indiana men have been charged with robbery and murder after a pizza deliveryman was found dead in Indianapolis Monday night.
Investigators say that Papa John’s delivery driver LaVon Drake, 24, was shot and killed with two different weapons after being summoned to an empty home with a false delivery. Police praised a neighbor for writing down the license plate of a suspicious car parked near the empty home, Chicago’s WGN reported.
The plate number turned in by the alert citizen led police to Juwuan Terry, 18, Jason Epeards, 18, and Jasean Dale, 19. During the investigation, other witnesses also alleged that they saw the three exiting and entering a nearby apartment complex carrying firearms.
When police confronted the three at the apartment, they allegedly confessed to being involved in the altercation with the delivery driver.
Police say that the three planned the fake delivery, robbed and killed the driver, then took his pizzas to their apartment and ate them for dinner.
A delivery driver for another pizza parlor told WXIN that the whole incident is sad. “I mean it really makes me sad, you know we’re just out here doing our job,” Tyler Gadberry of Topper’s Pizza said.
Another pizza shop employee noted that most shops have no-go areas for the very reason that they fear entering those areas. “You have to be very careful,” Topper’s employee Kimberly Charles said.
“I feel so sorry for his family,” Charles added. “If we were to ever lose somebody here, which hopefully never happens, we would probably shut our store down, because were that big of a family.”
The three men will appear in court on Thursday.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.