Court records: Indianapolis man gunned down outside home with 5 children, suspect charged
Cashapp, surveillance video and a cellphone guided police during a 14-month investigation into the killing of Clarence Holder III.
Holder, 38, died on the side of a residential street on the city's east side, feet away from his home with five of his young children inside.
About midnight Nov. 30, 2022 Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department officers were dispatched to the neighborhood off English Avenue inside I-465 when residents in the 600 block of Woods Crossing Drive heard gunfire. Responding officers found nothing unusual.
Two hours later a man returning home from work saw something lying along the curb and stopped to investigate, finding Holder dead from a single gunshot wound to the chest, according to court documents.
At the scene, evidence technicians collected two 9mm Lugar shell casings and Holder's Apple iPhone, which was found in a grassy area next to the curb where he died.
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Evidence on the phone, including Cashapp exchanges, Facebook messages and video chats, led police to their suspect, Cashmenn Moore, 34.
Moore and Holder communicated several times the night of the shooting, with one of the last messages coming in at 11:34 p.m. telling Holder to "come out." That was followed by a 58-second video chat at 11:56 p.m., four minutes before midnight, the last time any of Holder's kids saw him alive, police said in an arrest affidavit for Moore.
Video from the area of the shooting gave police their next clue: a small 4-door older sedan captured going by about the time of the shooting.
Detectives began watching Moore and in mid-December 2022 saw him driving a 1991 Toyota Corolla with handicapped plates. Police followed Moore to an empty lot at East 30th Street and North Sherman Drive, where he caught on that officers were trailing him and sped off down an alley. Police chased him through the alley, onto West 28th Street to Wheeler Street. The Toyota spun out in a yard and got back onto Sherman Drive before crashing into an IndyGo bus. It's unclear from court records if Moore was taken into custody at that time.
In March 2023, Moore was arrested on the east side of the city during a traffic stop and charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon, false identity statement and knowingly operating a motor vehicle without ever receiving a license, court records show.
At the time of his arrest last year, Moore had a warrant for his arrest in connection with a possession of a firearm by a serious violent charge.
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A police news release announcing his arrest indicates Moore was already in custody when charges were filed in Holder’s death.
After the pursuit in 2022, police retraced the route and found a discarded 9mm Taurus firearm with an extended magazine investigators believe was tossed out of the Toyota that Moore was driving. A forensic examination determined the Taurus "matched the two casings from the homicide scene and the bullet recovered from the body of Mr. Holder," the affidavit states.
The Marion County Prosecutor’s Office charged Moore with murder and possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon.
In November 2020, Moore pleaded guilty to unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon and battery while armed with a deadly weapon as part of a deal with prosecutors.
He was sentenced to four years in the Indiana Department of Corrections, followed by four years of home detention in that case, court records show. The charges stemmed from the 2019 shooting of Loren Crawford, who is the son of former Marion County Judge Barbara Crawford.
He was released in June 2022 on probation in that case having received credit for time served and good behavior.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: IMPD: Man charged in 2022 deadly shooting on Woods Crossing Drive
