On January 22, 2019, 25-year-old Black male David Simmie Gibbs Jr. was traveling in a vehicle on the northwest side of Indianapolis, Indiana, when he became the victim of a violent and targeted attack. The incident occurred early that Tuesday morning near the intersection of West 86th Street and Ditch Road. As the vehicle Gibbs was occupying moved through traffic, individuals in another car opened fire, spraying the vehicle with bullets in what authorities described as a calculated ambush.
Gibbs, who was driving the vehicle at the time of the shooting, managed to steer the car to St. Vincent Hospital despite suffering critical injuries. Medical personnel attended to him upon arrival, but he was pronounced dead shortly thereafter. Two other passengers in the car, identified as 31-year-old Ryan Pedtke and 31-year-old Billy Landrum, also sustained gunshot wounds during the barrage. Both surviving victims were treated for their injuries, with one being released after emergency care while the other remained hospitalized in stable condition.
Investigators with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department characterized the shooting as a "tit-for-tat" retaliation linked to ongoing conflicts. Detectives noted that Gibbs and one of the surviving passengers had been previously named in a 2016 investigation involving the "Gett Money Gang," a group associated with prior violence in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood. At the time of the report, police had not announced any arrests in connection with Gibbs' murder, and the case was listed as unsolved in local homicide databases. Authorities appealed to the public for information and sought surveillance footage from nearby businesses, such as a Village Pantry, to help identify the shooters responsible for the attack.
