INDIANAPOLIS -- A former employee who shot and killed eight people at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis never appeared before a judge for a hearing under Indiana's "red flag" law, even after his mother called police last year to say her son might commit "suicide by cop," a prosecutor said Monday.
But prosecutors were limited in their ability to prepare a "red flag" case due to a 2019 change in the law that requires courts to make a "good-faith effort" to hold a hearing within 14 days. An additional amendment required them to file an affidavit with the court within 48 hours. Police on Monday identified the high-capacity weapons used by Hole, who was 19 at the time of the shooting. One was a Ruger AR-556 Hole purchased in September. The second was an HM Defence HM15F he bought in July, just months after police had seized the pump-action shotgun. A Ruger AR-556 also was used last month in a shooting that killed 10 people in Boulder, Colorado.
Republican state Sen. Erin Houchin, a sponsor of those tougher provisions, said in the Hole case the law "could have worked just as it should, but the prosecutor never pursued it.""There are a number of loopholes in the practical application of this law. ... It does not necessarily give everyone the tools they need to make the most well-informed decisions," he said.
Democratic state Rep. Ed DeLaney, a gun control advocate, said he hoped Republicans would be receptive to reviewing the law in the future. He said there isn't time to force an immediate debate because the 2021 legislative session is slated to end later this week. In Hole's case, that would have meant that his family's agreement to not ask for the seized gun back would not have been enough to avoid a court hearing, and could have prevented him from purchasing additional weapons, said Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Indiana.