In the spring of 2018, the life of 35-year-old Clifton 'Cliff' Sharp, a male resident of Indianapolis, was abruptly ended by gunfire. On the evening of April 7th, police were called to a home in the 1600 block of Union Street on the city's south side. Inside, they discovered Sharp, who had sustained a fatal gunshot wound. The incident was one of several violent events that plagued Indianapolis over that weekend.
Present at the scene was a woman with whom Sharp was in a relationship.
She was questioned by homicide detectives and cooperated with the initial investigation. In the immediate aftermath, authorities did not publicly identify who fired the fatal shot, and no arrests were made, leaving the case under active investigation as detectives worked to piece together the events that led to the shooting.
Later, court documents related to a civil matter over Sharp's bond money would shed more light on the circumstances of his death. These documents identified the woman present at the scene as Brianna Finney and explicitly stated that she had shot and killed him. However, the same legal filings also noted that no criminal charges had been filed against Finney, as she maintained that her actions were in self-defense.
The investigation into Clifton Sharp's death did not lead to any publicly announced arrests or a criminal trial. The claim of self-defense appears to have been a significant factor in the investigation's outcome. The case, which began as a homicide investigation, concluded without any individual being criminally charged for his death, leaving the narrative of that fatal April evening to be defined by the accounts given to investigators at the scene.
