IMPD still searching for more information on homicide that occurred at homeless encampment

INDIANAPOLIS - When I said I was going to investigate the killing of a man in a homeless encampment in the 700 block of South Tibbs Avenue earlier this month, I was advised to not go in there because, "they are deep in the woods, will see you coming before you see them and some are known to be armed."




I considered myself warned.




"If you're an outsider, you're not really welcomed," a woman told me when I said I was asking questions about the killing of Vince Gruber July 17. "And he was an outsider?" I asked. "He was an outsider," she said.




It was a phone call from a nearby business that brought IMPD homicide detectives to the woods along some railroad tracks near Neeld Ditch as it branches off from a fork in Eagle Creek on the southwest side.




Gruber, 27, was found shot to death.




He'll be buried in Shoals, Indiana, this week, and his family remembers the Decatur High School grad as someone who, "loved hunting, fishing, cars and motorcycles."




And, said a woman who told me she had many conversations with Gruber, hanging around a homeless encampment where he didn't belong.




"He's a good kid, and as far as I know, he got mixed up with the wrong people," she said. "I feel sorry for his family. I tried to warn him not to even step in the same room. Nobody knew him, and they thought he was a cop."




Mistrust of the police is the reason IMPD uncharacteristically asked for help by issuing a Crime Stoppers bulletin this past Friday - just eight days after Gruber's murder.




"I've seen him around a few times, two or three times," said a man on a bicycle on West Morris Street who was checking in on his brother's camp following his arrest Saturday night. "Nobody's talking to the cops."




In the tenuous environment that makes up homeless encampments throughout Indianapolis, it doesn't take much for violence to erupt, sometimes seemingly self-justified over the slightest of provocations.




"I had somebody set fire to my truck with me in it," said the man with the bicycle. "A lot of us are like family, I mean, people we've known most of our lives, and we're all in the same spot, and we gotta look out for each other or the same thing's gonna happen to us."




"Anything can happen out here. Every night," said the woman. "I was out here for seven months, and you have to watch your own back, and if you don't, oh run, and if you come here and don't know anyone, it could be worse."




If you know anything about the murder of Vince Gruber in a homeless encampment off South Tibbs Avenue on July 17, call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at (317) 262-8477.





via: https://fox59.com/news/impd-still-searching-for-more-information-on-homicide-that-occurred-at-homeless-encampment/