Indianapolis man Raymond Childs III, who killed several family members, gets 360-year sentence

A 21-year-old Indianapolis man who fatally shot four family members and a brother’s pregnant girlfriend in 2021, after his father reprimanded him for staying out late, was sentenced Tuesday to 360 years in prison, according to court records and local news reports.

The man, Raymond Childs III, was 17 when he used a handgun to kill his father, Raymond Childs Jr., 42; his stepmother, Kezzie Childs, 42; his brother, Elijah Childs, 18; his sister, Rita Childs, 13; and his brother’s pregnant girlfriend, Kiara Hawkins, 19. A younger brother survived the shooting and left the home to get help.

Childs was arrested one day after the shooting, which occurred in the early morning hours of Jan. 24, 2021.

The police said they had received reports of a person shot on the eastern side of Indianapolis around 4 a.m. When officers arrived, they found one of Childs’ brothers with multiple gunshot wounds, according to a news release from Marion County prosecutors. That brother, who survived, identified Raymond Childs III as the shooter and directed police officers to the family’s home on Adams Street, where they found the five bodies.

Childs turned the gun on his family after his father told him that he would punish him for breaking curfew, according to Fox 59, a local Fox affiliate.

Ray Casanova, a lawyer representing Childs, said in an email that Childs’ father had contacted his son to tell him to return home from his girlfriend’s house after leaving without permission. When he returned home, Childs apologised, Casanova said. Casanova also said that it was a particularly violent household. “What should have been a place of nurture was instead a place of violence, abuse, and neglect,” he said.

At his sentencing Tuesday, Childs maintained his innocence. “I’m not no killer, I’m not no murderer, I’m not no bad person,” he said.

In a five-day trial in October, Childs was convicted of six counts of murder, one count of attempted murder and one count of carrying a handgun without a license. He was sentenced to consecutive terms of 55 years for each person killed, plus another 55 years for Hawkins’ fetus, and 30 years on the attempted murder charge.

An earlier trial ended in a mistrial after a witness confronted Childs from the stand, The Associated Press reported.

Shortly after the shooting in 2021, the city’s mayor, Joe Hogsett, called the bloodshed “an act of evil” and a mass murder that brought terror to the community. There were at least three mass shootings in Indianapolis in 2021, including one in which eight people were killed and seven were injured in a FedEx warehouse.