In the early morning hours of August 25, 2022, 16-year-old Temario Stokes Jr. was waiting for his school bus in the Summerfield Village subdivision in Greenwood, Indiana, when his life was abruptly cut short. A male, 18 years old at the time, approached the bus stop on the corner of Winterwood Drive and Providence Drive and shot Temario multiple times before fleeing the scene on foot. Witnesses described the shooter as wearing a black hoodie.
Having only been a student at Whiteland Community High School for four days, the young man was a new resident to the neighborhood. His mother heard the gunshots from her home and ran outside to find her son lying on the ground.
The investigation into the shooting led Greenwood police to Tyrique Sevin Radford El, who lived about a mile from Temario. The two were described as acquaintances. Detectives learned that a few weeks prior to the shooting, there had been a dispute between Temario, his younger sibling, and another juvenile concerning a stolen dirt bike. Radford El was arrested later the same day and confessed to the shooting. He told investigators that he believed he was committing manslaughter because he 'shot him more times than necessary' and continued to fire as Temario tried to run away. The weapon, a Taurus G2C 9mm handgun, was recovered from a cornfield where Radford El had discarded it.
In late September 2024, Tyrique Sevin Radford El, then 20, pleaded guilty to murder. On November 26, 2024, he was sentenced to 55 years in prison. Fifty of those years will be served in prison, with the remaining five to be served on probation. During the sentencing, it was revealed that in a recorded jailhouse phone call from September 2022, when asked if he shot Stokes, Radford El was instructed to breathe heavily if he did, which he proceeded to do. The judge acknowledged the devastating loss to Temario's family, stating that no sentence could truly be enough. In a victim impact statement, Temario's mother directly addressed her son's killer, calling him a 'killer coward hater and thief.'
