INDIANAPOLIS — Dorean Petty and Rodney Hanley were friends.
Hanley, 19, was shot to death by a teen IMPD homicide detectives said the two friends were trying to rob at gunpoint.
Petty, 22, ran away as Hanley lay dying outside of a downtown convenience store last summer.
The would-be robbery victim has not been charged in his self-defense fatal shooting of Hanley.
Petty, however, has been charged with the murder of his friend.
”Murder is where you go in and intentionally kill someone and you go in with the purpose of killing that person. Felony murder is where you engage in felony behavior and someone dies as a result of that felony,” said John Tompkins, a defense attorney who is not connected to the case. ”If you are part of the felony that’s given rise to the felony murder, then, yes, as long as you’re involved in that felony, you can just be there or be just generally involved, you have to be part of the felony that is charged at the felony murder.”
A Probable Cause Affidavit indicates surveillance video from the store in the 900 block of North Delaware Street shows Hanley and Petty entering the building with guns drawn and approaching another teenager buying cigars at the checkout counter early on the morning of last August 21st.
Each young man was armed.
The teen customer told investigators that Hanley asked him, “What you on?” and then tried to grab his gun as the would-be victim fired first, fatally wounding Hanley.
Hanley’s foster father, John Grice, said the young men were all acquaintances who had been exchanging social media rumors about one of them that could be potentially personally embarrassing.
”Street gumbo. That’s what it is, all mixed up in one little soup,” said Grice. ”Then you got a lot of young men that’s really barely old enough to get a gun that are not having any type of safety training and the you have a lot of issuers that is going on on social media.”
Tompkins said if Petty’s attorney can make the argument that the murder happened as the result of an argument and not a robbery, his client may not be convicted of murder.
”The defense is the defense to the underlying felony whatever that might be, so, if it wasn’t really a robbery, if something happened that interrupted the robbery and this became a fight instead of a robbery. So, the robbery stops and they engage in different behavior among themselves.”
Grice said he finds a tragic irony in that Hanley had completed a vocational course to qualify to drive a forklift but had no training to carry a gun.
”And don’t even need a permit,” he said. “That’s just unheard of. With no safety training, I mean, it takes, what, six months for a young guy to get a drivers license after he has a permit, but there’s no six-month leeway to owning a gun? What type of sense does that make?”
Petty is being held without bond and faces a July trial date.
