Vel K Bethea

In the summer of 2011, a simple request for a cigarette spiraled into a fatal encounter for a 38-year-old man in Indianapolis. On the evening of Wednesday, June 29, Manvel K. Bethea was at an apartment complex on the northwest side of the city, in the 4000 block of Gateway Court, when he was approached by an individual.

The stranger's seemingly innocuous question for a cigarette was followed by an act of sudden and brutal violence. The suspect, without any apparent provocation, opened fir ...