Indianapolis police were called before dawn Wednesday to reports of a person shot near the intersection of 13th Street and Rural Street on the city's Near East Side, where officers found a teenage girl suffering from a gunshot wound. She was rushed to an area hospital in critical condition, and investigators are still working to determine what led to the shooting.
Two Accounts Put Shooting Blocks Apart
According to WIBC 93.1 FM, the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department was dispatched to the area of 13th and Rural streets after reports of a person shot, and officers located the teen suffering from a gunshot wound before transporting her to the hospital. WTHR reported that officers instead responded around 5 a.m. to the 1300 block of North Dearborn Street near East 13th Street, where IMPD Capt. Don Weilhammer confirmed the victim is a juvenile girl. The two outlets differ slightly on the exact cross street, but both describe the same predawn shooting on Indianapolis' Near East Side.
Corridor Has Seen Repeated Violence This Summer
Wednesday's shooting adds to a violent stretch along the 13th Street corridor. Less than a month earlier, on July 6, a shooting at East 13th Street and North Gladstone Avenue left two people dead in what was reported as a murder-suicide. Just days before this latest incident, Hoodline also covered a porch shootout on Kildare Avenue that wounded a former IMPD deputy chief and a gunman, part of a run of east-side shootings that left two people dead earlier this month.
The shooting location falls within IMPD's East District, a patrol area covering 50 square miles and serving roughly 145,489 residents, according to city of Indianapolis data. As of 2023, that district was staffed by 204 sworn officers, the same data shows.
Juvenile Shootings Rising Even As Crime Falls Citywide
The wounded teen's case fits a trend IMPD leadership has flagged in recent months. In April, IMPD Chief Tanya Terry told the City-County Council that the share of juvenile homicide victims in Indianapolis rose nearly 4% during the first quarter of 2026, according to WTHR. That concern has persisted even as the department reported major overall gains elsewhere, with criminal homicides falling 20% and non-fatal shootings dropping 21% citywide between 2024 and 2025, per the same station.
A joint investigation by Mirror Indy found that while youth gun homicides in Indianapolis fell from 44 in 2023 to 17 in 2024, non-fatal shootings among kids 19 and under rose 7% over that same span, a gap that echoes Wednesday's non-fatal shooting of a teenager.
State and City Respond With New Rules, Task Force
Policymakers have also moved to address the pattern. In February, the Indiana legislature advanced a bill that would elevate illegal handgun possession by minors near school property to a Level 5 felony and push repeat juvenile firearm offenders toward adult court, according to WFYI. The following month, the city launched a Youth Violence Reduction Initiative aimed specifically at curbing gun violence among young people, the outlet reported, while IMPD continues to lean on the multi-agency Indiana Crime Guns Task Force and data-driven patrol deployment to track illegal firearms on the East Side, per the same report.
What Investigators Still Don't Know
As of Wednesday, IMPD had not released the teen's exact age, identified a suspect, or disclosed a motive for the shooting. Anyone with information is asked to contact Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana online or by calling 317-262-TIPS, according to the city of Indianapolis.
