INDIANAPOLIS — Ariana Holston was 22, the mother of two little boys and looking forward to the anticipated birth in the fall to her first daughter when she and the baby were slain in what IMPD believes was a targeted hit in the summer of 2021.
”I’m hurt. I’m upset. I’m sad. It’s like it broke my heart,” Lasha Holston told us within days of her sister’s killing.
Ariana and a cousin, also pregnant, were driving away from a beauty supply store at E. 38th Street and N. Post Road on the afternoon of July 21, 2021, when a dark vehicle pulled up next to them and the driver opened fire.
”There are a few individuals that potentially had issues with Ariana,” IMPD Homicide Detective David Miller told Indy Unsolved. ”There were some other incidents surrounding family members as well. I’m more inclined to believe that she was the intended target.”
Miller said the shell casings detectives recovered from an earlier shots fired incident not far from a home occupied by Holston’s relatives matched bullets from the gun that took the young mother’s life.
And the detective has more.
”I have some video that I’m working from and I also have the firearms evidence which would lead to some potential evidence from another crime scene as well,” he said.
Miller believes the murder weapon is still floating around Indy’s east side.
”Another reason you may want to come in and talk to me and you know something had happened and came into possession of a firearm that you really don’t want to have any part of,” he said.
Miller said he is undecided as to whether someone inside the beauty supply store called Holston’s killer to tell them the victim was on site or if the killer recognized the car at the right place at the wrong time.
”I fear it has just fallen by the wayside, nobody realizes there was an unborn baby at the time that also is a victim of this,” he said. “There’s somebody who knows, that’s for sure. Whether it’s a friend of the suspect’s, an ex-girlfriend, a family member even.”
If you have any information regarding the murder of Ariana Holston on Indy’s northeast side in the summer of 2021, call Crime Stoppers and remain anonymous at (317) 262-TIPS or IMPD’s Homicide Branch at (317) 327-3475.
