On the evening of January 27, 2020, Ashok Kaumar, 35, a man, was working his shift behind the counter at a Subway inside the Shadeland Station shopping center on Indianapolis’ northeast side, near East 75th Street and North Shadeland Avenue. Not long before 8 p.m., police were called to the store at 7401 N. Shadeland Ave. on reports of a robbery in progress.
The restaurant was open, lights on, the kind of place where the routine of slicing bread and ringing up orders can feel like a steady heartbeat—until it isn’t.
Investigators said three suspects came into the shop dressed in black, each carrying a black backpack, their faces covered—two in black masks, and one in a leopard-print mask. During what police described as an attempted robbery, a struggle broke out inside the store. In the chaos, Kaumar was shot. He was found dead inside the restaurant, and investigators later said he died from a gunshot wound. The suspects fled, captured only in surveillance images and the fragments of description left behind in the panic of that moment.
In the days that followed, grief gathered where the violence had erupted. Friends, coworkers, and community members held vigils near the storefront, remembering a worker known for showing up day after day, for years, and trying to make an honest living in a place that suddenly felt unsafe. Nearby business owners spoke of watching the masked figures move through the plaza and of the fear that lingered after the sirens faded—fear for employees, for customers, for anyone who might be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Police released images of the suspects and asked the public for help identifying them, urging anyone with information to contact homicide detectives or Crime Stoppers. No arrests were announced in the initial investigation, and the case was described in those early reports as a search for the three masked suspects who vanished into the night after the shooting.
