Richard Taylor

A wave of deadly violence that swept through Indianapolis in the summer of 2006 claimed the life of Richard Roland Taylor, an 18-year-old man who was fatally shot in the early morning hours of Saturday, August 5. His death was part of a chaotic and brutal 24-hour period that left at least six people dead and prompted the city's mayor to declare an "extreme emergency." The series of shootings left a trail of grieving families and a community desperate for answers.

The violence began to escalate around 3:21 a.m. when a police officer discovered the body of 26-year-old Maurice White. He had been shot to death inside his car, which was parked in an alley behind a downtown nightclub called The Vault. Investigators quickly theorized that White's death was an act of retaliation, as he had recently been acquitted in a separate murder case. Police believed his killing may have been the catalyst for the bloodshed that followed.

Just minutes later, around 3:30 a.m. and only a block away from where White’s body was found, a car carrying four men was riddled with bullets at a Marathon gas station at the intersection of 9th and Delaware Streets. In the barrage of gunfire, both Richard Taylor and 23-year-old Antonio Jones were killed. Two other men in the car, Andrew Swanigan and Steven Foor, were also shot but survived their injuries. The men had reportedly been at the same nightclub as Maurice White earlier in the evening.

The Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) responded to the string of homicides by flooding the streets with officers. In the investigation into the murders of Taylor and Jones, detectives quickly identified a primary suspect: Cortez Cunningham. Authorities issued warrants for Cunningham's arrest on two counts of murder and two counts of aggravated assault. Police publicly named Cunningham and sought information on his whereabouts, but he was not immediately apprehended.

The search for Cunningham created further turmoil. A few days after the shooting, Richard Taylor's uncle, Anthony Taylor, was arrested during a traffic stop. He was wearing a bullet-proof vest and was armed with a semiautomatic pistol. He admitted to police that he had been actively searching for Cortez Cunningham, intending to take matters into his own hands out of frustration with the pace of the police investigation. "I'd been out looking for him, ever since it happened," he told reporters. "I pulled his picture off the Internet... and I been out looking for him."

While police made arrests in some of the other homicides that plagued the city that violent weekend, the case against the man suspected of killing Richard Taylor and Antonio Jones went cold. Publicly available records do not indicate that Cortez Cunningham was ever arrested, tried, or convicted for these specific murders. The trail of information ends after he was named as the primary suspect. The families of Richard Taylor and Antonio Jones were left without legal closure. Richard's funeral service was held on August 11, 2006, at Williams & Bluitt Funeral Home, followed by a burial in Sutherland Park Cemetery.

As of the latest available information, the double homicide at the corner of 9th and Delaware remains officially unresolved by the courts. Although a suspect was identified by law enforcement shortly after the crime, the final outcome of the warrant for his arrest and the subsequent legal proceedings, if any, remain unclear. The deaths of Richard Taylor and Antonio Jones stand as a painful reminder of a weekend of extraordinary violence that shook the city of Indianapolis.