The arrests come more than three months after a 55-year-old man was shot at a BP station on West 38th Street.
INDIANAPOLIS, IN — Two 15-year-old boys have been arrested in the fatal robbery of a 55-year-old man who was shot in December at a BP gas station on Indianapolis’ near north side, police and local reports say.
Desmond Lee Perry Sr. was shot the night of Dec. 6, 2025, at 37 W. 38th St. and later died at a hospital. The case drew attention because of the victim’s age, the young ages of the suspects and the long gap between the killing and the arrests. One teen had already been preliminarily charged this month, and a second arrest was later reported as investigators continued to build the case. The immediate stakes now center on whether prosecutors file formal charges and whether the case stays in juvenile court or is moved into adult court.
Police were called to the BP station near North Meridian Street at about 7:50 p.m. on Dec. 6 after a report of a person shot. Officers found Perry suffering from a gunshot wound inside or at the station area and had him taken to a hospital in critical condition. He later died from his injuries. In the days after the shooting, his family said they believed he had been caught in a robbery gone wrong. Perry’s son, Daechaun Copeland, described his father as a man who “knew his Bible from front to back” and said the killing made no sense. For months, the shooting remained an open homicide investigation, with police releasing little in public beyond the location, the victim’s identity and a request for help from anyone who saw what happened that Saturday night along the busy West 38th Street corridor.
By late March, that investigation had produced two arrests. Reports citing court records said one 15-year-old was preliminarily charged on March 2 with felony murder and robbery resulting in death. Investigators reportedly detained that teen after a separate incident in February, though authorities have not publicly laid out the full sequence of events that led detectives from that encounter back to the December homicide. A second 15-year-old was later taken into custody in the same case. Because both suspects are juveniles, their names have not been broadly released in public reporting. Police also have not publicly described in detail what evidence ties each boy to the shooting, whether surveillance video captured the confrontation, whether a weapon was recovered or whether either teen is accused of firing the shot that killed Perry. At this stage, those gaps remain important, because the public record is still thinner than it would be in a typical adult criminal filing.
The location itself had already been a concern for neighbors and police. Records cited in earlier local coverage showed the gas station had drawn more than 60 police runs in the year before the shooting, including calls involving disturbances, stolen vehicles and drug activity. That history does not establish what happened to Perry, but it helps explain why the killing quickly became part of a larger local conversation about violence, repeat trouble spots and the risks faced by people simply stopping at a neighborhood business. The case also landed amid broader concern in Indianapolis about youth violence. City leaders and police have spent the past year describing a need for both enforcement and prevention as more serious cases involve teenagers either as victims, suspects or both. In that setting, the arrest of two 15-year-olds in a robbery that ended in a man’s death carried weight beyond a single homicide file, especially because it raised new questions about how early teens are getting pulled into armed crimes with deadly consequences.
The legal process from here may move in stages. A preliminary charge is not the same as a formal information filed by prosecutors, and juvenile cases often begin with less public detail than adult cases. Prosecutors must now decide what final charges, if any, to file against each teen and whether to ask a judge to waive either suspect into adult court. In Indiana, robbery allegations that end in a death can expose a defendant to some of the most serious penalties in the criminal code if the case is tried in adult court. No public hearing date had been widely reported by Thursday, and no public filing described whether the state intends to pursue direct adult prosecution or a waiver request. It is also not clear whether the two boys are accused of acting together from the start, whether one is alleged to have planned the robbery and whether either has made statements to police. Those questions will likely shape the next court filings and any detention or probable cause hearings that follow.
For Perry’s relatives, the arrests mark movement in a case that had gone quiet after the initial burst of coverage in December. Family members had spoken publicly about the loss of a father and working man whose death shattered a household just weeks before the holidays. Copeland said at the time that there had to be another way besides taking from someone who had worked for what he had. Police, meanwhile, framed the gas station killing as part of a wider effort to understand why some businesses become magnets for repeated calls and violence. IMPD Officer Tommy Thompson said in earlier coverage that the answer is not always as simple as counting runs at one address, and can involve lighting, layout, vulnerable people around the property and the need for crime prevention changes. That larger backdrop remains in view even as the homicide case shifts into a court-driven phase. For now, the central fact is unchanged: Perry was killed on Dec. 6, and two teenage suspects are now in custody as the city waits for prosecutors to set the next step.
As of Thursday, both suspects were reported under arrest and the homicide case had moved from an unsolved shooting to an active prosecution review. The next milestone is expected to be formal charging decisions and the first publicly documented court dates for the two boys.
Author note: Last updated March 26, 2026.