Last month, Indianapolis police officers handed a grieving mother a 17-page-long document explaining how and why they believed her 19-year-old son was killed in 2019.

Rodney Mitchell III was found dead in a riverbank with three bullet wounds in his head in December 2019.

The original detective assigned to the case returned for the meeting, Deena Stapp said. He’d been promoted and transferred off the case at some point during the six years following her son’s death.

As Stapp finished reading the document Marion County prosecutors would use to charge two people with murder, she said the officer gave her a deep hug and began to cry.

When Mitchell, a young Black man, was found shot, Stapp said officers made assumptions about his lifestyle and friends. They were surprised, she said, when th

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