INDIANAPOLIS — Charles Lovelady Jr., 28, and his girlfriend were headed home from the Sunset Strip club on West 16th Street on Saturday morning when a vehicle came up on them at Indiana an University Avenues. Lovelady’s girlfriend said the occupants of the vehicle then began firing shots at them.
“I was kind of leaned over the center console just talking and goofing off, and it just started to sound like fireworks, and we didn’t know what was going on,” Divina Leal told FOX59/CBS4. “I just felt like I got pushed in my back, and it started to burn, and I told him I got hit, and he took off real fast, and they just kept shooting. I saw the look on his face when he got shot, and he just looked so scared, and he was trying so hard to get us to the hospital. He just ended up passing out, and he slumped over the seat, and he was looking at me, and I was just screaming.”
Lovelady was fatally wounded in the shooting .
Possibly due to the number of shell casings in the street, IMPD detectives announced after the shooting that they were under the impression there was a “running gun battle” between two vehicles.
”And they’re saying he was shooting, and my son didn’t shoot at anybody,” said Kendra Lovelady, Charles’ mother. “It was not a shootout.”
“He had a permit to carry, and he had his firearm in the car, and it had never been shot,” said Charles Lovelady Sr. “It was a surprise attack on him.”
Charles and his son were partners in Chuck’s Coney Island, a restaurant located at 2932 East 20th Street. The duo was ready to reopen following a recent business expansion.
“As big as my brother was, he was a teddy bear,” Charles Jr.’s sister Kendia said. “He was a gentle soul. We would get out and do these events for the community, and my brother would be at the forefront of it. Talking to everybody, passing out things out of the goodness of his heart, we didn’t expect a dime from anybody, hot dog drives and things. Anybody who ever met my brother or knew my brother loved him.”
”We moved to Indianapolis for a better life for our children and for this to happen,” said Charles Sr., a Detroit native. ”Mistaken identity, that’s what everyone says, mistaken identity. Same car.”
Charles Jr. drove a 2021 black Cadillac Escalade.
Lovelady’s father has offered a substantial reward for information leading to the arrest of his son’s killer.
Anyone with information on the shooting can call Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at (317) 262-8477 or IMPD Homicide Detective Gary Toms at (317) 327-3475.
”I truly just hope that everyone understands that crime has to stop,” said Charles Sr. “Senseless murders, they have to stop. They have to stop. Families are hurting. My family is crushed because of this.”
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