INDIANAPOLIS, IN — In the early hours of Sunday morning, Darrell Gibbs was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire outside his home on the 800 block of Denison Street on the southwest side of Indianapolis.
“I was in bed asleep, and then I hear the gunfire,” Gibbs recounted. “And my son taps on the door and tells me what’s happening, and I get dressed and come out back.”
Gibbs discovered that three armed and masked men had been attempting to kick in his back door. Despite their efforts, the door held long enough to prevent them from entering.
”A busted door jamb where they kept trying to kick it in,” Gibbs said as he inspected the damage. “It held long enough to hold ‘em back. But I got bullet holes to the windows and the door window and to the door itself and the wall inside.”
Gibbs’ son had engaged in a gunfight with one of the intruders in the backyard. Upon arriving outside, Gibbs found the wounded man lying on the ground, asking for help.
“I see the intruder laying here on the ground, and he wanted me to make a call for him, and ‘You know me, you know me,’” Gibbs said. “You don’t come knocking in somebody’s back door … and he lost his gun on this side of the ground over by the fire pit, and he was laying there in the weeds there.”
The wounded intruder was identified by Gibbs’ son as 24-year-old Matthew Kinniard II, a family member. Kinniard had previously been shot in 2020.
”It was little Matt, my nephew’s son,” Gibbs explained. Kinniard told Gibbs he couldn’t feel his legs and asked him to call his relatives. Gibbs called 911 and Kinniard’s grandmother and girlfriend.
”If I seen him walking down the street, I couldn’t have told you who he was. That’s how often I been around him,” said Gibbs. “I don’t really wish the worst on anybody, but I have no sympathy for anybody doing that. You don’t do that to family. It shouldn’t even be heard of, you know.”
When asked if there was anything valuable in his house, Gibbs replied, “No, I work hard enough just to pay the bills.” He speculated that someone might have misled Kinniard about potential valuables in his home.
Two of the intruders fled through a neighbor’s yard and escaped in a car parked near a neighborhood church after the shooting. Gibbs’ son was questioned and released by police.
