In the early morning hours of Sunday, December 6, 2020, the life of 21-year-old Angel Castaneda of Hammond, Indiana, came to a tragic end. He was a young Hispanic male who was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound to the head, lying on the grass in front of a building at 3601 Grand Blvd. in East Chicago. Officers were dispatched to the scene at approximately 9:14 AM following a call about a man down, and upon their arrival, responding medics pronounced Castaneda deceased.
Initially,
the circumstances surrounding Castaneda's death were investigated as a homicide. The scene was processed by the Lake County Coroner and the Lake County Sheriff's CSI unit. However, the investigation took a definitive turn when detectives recovered video surveillance footage from the area. The footage, from around 9:11 AM, clearly showed Castaneda walking alone on the 3600 block of Grand Boulevard. He then sat down in the grassy area and proceeded to shoot himself in the head. A semi-automatic Glock handgun and a single spent shell casing were recovered at the scene, corroborating the evidence from the video. Based on this evidence, the East Chicago Police Department concluded that Angel Castaneda's death was a suicide.
At the time of his death, Castaneda was a person of interest in multiple criminal investigations. According to the East Chicago Police, he was the prime suspect in a homicide and a separate shooting that had occurred in the city during the summer of 2020. Furthermore, he had active warrants for his arrest on charges of felony domestic battery and carrying a handgun without a permit. Detectives from Las Vegas were also in contact with East Chicago investigators, as Castaneda was a suspect in a shooting that took place in their jurisdiction as well. He is survived by his parents, three daughters, and his fiancée.
