Teenager slain at northside short-term rental party

INDIANAPOLIS - Neighbors at The Grounds, an apartment complex at East 21st Street and North Central Avenue, said they have complained to management for several months about short-term rentals taking over unleased units and bringing raucous strangers into their buildings, but to no avail.




"I noticed when I saw people I hadn't seen before at the pool across the street, specific gatherings on more than one occasion and I started to realize that people who don't live here on a long term were here on a regular basis," said one woman who said neighbors were intimidated by non-residential teens at a recent late night pool party.




"The constant influx of suitcases in and out. Cleaning folks that don't clean the building, but just a specific unit's time and time again. I knew immediately what was going on," said another neighbor with professional property leasing experience. "At first, they said it was corporate leases. I explained to them that I knew what a corporate lease was and it didn't check the boxes of a corporate lease."




Neighbors reported hearing four gunshots on the fourth floor of the building at 2136 North Central Avenue about 2:30 a.m. and minutes later, IMPD officers found Xavion Whitlow, 17, dead from a bullet wound.

"He was invited to this party by someone and all of his friends would tell him, 'Don't go, don't go,' because they had a feeling that this guy was gonna be there," said Whitlow's grandmother, Sharon Cannon. "The witnesses said that when he came in and sat down that this guy started acting really strange.




"This guy that did this to him, he believed that whatever beef they had, they had squashed it, but evidently the guy hadn't squashed it."




Cannon said witnesses provided the family with the shooter's nickname, which has been passed on to homicide detectives.




Whitlow played basketball at George Washington High School and was just starting his senior year.




Witnesses told the family, and neighbors confirmed, that the apartment was rented out for one night for the birthday party of a nineteen-year-old woman.




One neighbor said she was outside on the street when Whitlow's relatives arrived to see his body loaded into an IEMS ambulance.




" It's beyond traumatizing. I can't seem to get her screams out of my head and I can't imagine what the family is going through," she said and then remembered what a resident told her about the shooting. "She said essentially through her vent she could hear him dying and there was silence and there was a lot noises and sort of a shuffle and a scuffle and she heard loud voices saying. 'Run, run,' or 'Go.'"




Three neighbors told FOX 59/CBS4 that they had first raised concerns with building management several months ago regarding short-term rentals and the strangers they brought in.




"It started becoming a concern since mid-June when we would see the influx of suitcases seemingly every Friday, Sunday, Monday, even sometimes during the week," said one man. "A big driving factor for me was All-Star weekend for the WNBA. I've never seen the area so littered with cars."




"They aren't being screened at all," said one neighbor who partially filled out the application process to determine if the management company did security checks of short-term renters. "If I have a valid driver's license and am over the age of 18 and I had a credit card to put down, I can short-term lease for one night."




Requests for comment from the apartment management company were not returned.




"If people weren't concerned yet, I think a sixteen-year-old dying on the property should be enough to concern everyone in the vicinity," said one resident.




A year ago, the City County Council passed a short-term rental ordinance that requires landlords to pay a one-time $150 fee to have their unit or property listed on the city's short-term rental registry.




Neither of the building addresses indicated by neighbors as hosting short-term rentals are listed on that registry.





via: https://fox59.com/news/teenager-slain-at-northside-short-term-rental-party/