Homeowner Shoots Intruder Dead, Issues a Warning and Points to the Local Cemetery's Open Plots
Indianapolis resident Howard Murphy has been victimized by home invaders three times. Twice, the intruder ended up shot. One has ended up dead.
Now, he has a message for anyone else who might target him: There’s always more spots in the city’s historic Crown Hill Cemetery for anyone who makes his home a mark.
In an interview with WXIN-TV, Murphy said the latest attempt happened in the early hours of Friday morning, when a man broke into his West 34th St. house through a side window.
When Murphy came downstairs and confronted the man — identified by the coroner’s office as Steve Sheppard Jr. — he said the intruder attacked him.
“He took a video game system and threw it at me, and after that shots rang out,” Murphy said.
Murphy shot at the intruder; after the stranger ran up the stairs, he died in the bedroom holding a knife.
“I honestly didn’t even know if he had been shot because he was still moving around and running around,” Murphy said.
The homeowner was taken into police custody, where he cooperated with investigators and was subsequently released. In an initial report, WXIN said Indianapolis police told them that “preliminary evidence indicates this was a home invasion or burglary.”
Murphy told WXIN that his house had been burglarized earlier in the week. In that case, he said, thousands of dollars of electronics were pilfered.
He didn’t know if the alleged burglar was the same one he killed on Friday.
However, Sheppard Jr. wasn’t the first home intruder Murphy has shot.
According to police records, law enforcement were called to his home in 2014 after another man kicked in Howard’s door, not knowing that Howard was home.
Murphy shot that man in the leg; he escaped from the scene, but was eventually caught and convicted of breaking into the premises. Murphy, meanwhile, was cleared of wrongdoing.
“He took a gamble thinking I wasn’t there, and I happened to be there,” Murphy said in 2014. “He reached for something. I don’t know if it was a sledge hammer, but he reached for something and was getting ready to strike me, and that’s when shots were fired.”
On Friday, he insisted this pattern wasn’t something he was inviting.
“I don’t go out looking for trouble. I mind my own business,” Murphy told WXIN.
Then, he had a warning for anyone who was looking to repeat the mistakes of past crooks.
“I hate that it happened. I hope these other guys learn a lesson from it. If not, there’s plenty of spots over in Crown Hill,” he said — referring to the city’s famous cemetery, which says on its website that it’s “the largest green-space inside the Indianapolis beltway and the third largest non-government cemetery in the U.S.”
“I don’t want it to be like that, but just like the average worker, I work hard for what I’ve got,” Murphy continued. “If you come and take it, there’s consequences behind that.”
As there ought to be. This is why self-defense is so important: Americans shouldn’t live in fear of knife-wielding burglars coming into our homes, nor should we cower and let them have their way with what we own.
This is why we have a Second Amendment — and it’s why people should think twice before invading someone else’s castle.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
