Brazen 2017 daylight homicide turned cold case is cleared; 2 charged
- Jamie Duffy
- Apr 16
- 4 min read
FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---The homicide was in August when the evening is still summer lit.
Around 6 p.m. August 3, 2017, a witness saw Tavon Underwood, now 27, and Carlos Ellis, now 26, swoop down on a black Buick Regal from different directions, firing their guns at the hapless victim, Nicholas Hennan, according to a probable cause affidavit written by homicide detective Brian Martin, the cold case sleuth for the Fort Wayne Police Department.
The two (alleged) killers were running with their guns out for all to see. A jogger said she saw two guys, one with a gun, running from the scene and that both were wearing red!
Another witness said her kids were outside playing at the Fairfield Gardens apartments when Underwood told her youngest to go inside. She had a full view from her window as the homicide rolled out in the peaceful complex off Fairfield Avenue. It has sidewalks, stretches of grass and tall trees.
She said she saw Underwood, then 20, running across the field with a handgun in his hand about the same time she saw ‘Los’ aka Carlos, then 19, come on the scene. Both “began shooting inside the car,” court documents said.
After they ambushed Hennan, they opened the car door and rummaged through his pockets, brazen acts considering there are plenty of windows in the apartment buildings and anyone might dare look out what with all the gunshots punctuating the sound barrier.
Then they took off running back towards the park at the back of the complex, she said.
After the shooting, Underwood, whom the witness had known for a couple of years, called her and asked her what she’d seen and did she know what happened. She said “no,” because she was scared, court documents said.
“I caught my first body,” he boasted. A couple of days later, Underwood visited her with ‘Los,’ and asked her not to talk to anyone about the shooting. He looked scared, she recalled.
But Ellis made “loud” comments about “m———s
better not say anything,” which she took as a threat.
In another conversation she had with Tavon, he again said he “caught” a body and that they were robbing the victim for drugs. She thought it was for an ounce of cocaine, something that would be worth hundreds of dollars.
Because the Indiana State Poiice forensic laboratory is inundated with requests, it limits the number of test examples to six. Fort Wayne detectives sent six shell casings to the lab and forensic analysis determined that two different 9mm guns were used to kill Hennan. He died from multiple bullet wounds to the chest, court documents said.
Detectives also got hold of Hennan’s cell phone and traced calls to phones belonging to Ellis and Ellis’s girlfriend. A third phone number went to a unnamed drug dealer who claimed he’d sold drugs to Hennan in the past, but hadn’t seen him the day he was killed. According to an online obituary, Hennan was 36.
The drug dealer told detectives that one of Ellis’s associates was Underwood and they were known to hang out at Candlelite Apartments, very close to Fairfield Gardens where Hennan was killed. Both complexes are off Fairfield Avenue, south of Airport Expressway.
In December 2017, Ellis and his girl were picked up in a traffic stop and, during the police interview, the girlfriend admitted that it was her cell phone that was found in in the back seat of Hennan’s car.
“I don’t know anything that happened,” she blurted out before she was even asked, court documents said. She said she cut off that cell phone because Ellis wouldn’t pick up the phone. The phone was used by both Ellis and Tavon, she added.
Almost a year later, the Indiana State Police lab said Ellis’s DNA was found on the pink and white phone that turned up in Hennan’s car, court documents said.
FWPD homicide detective Darrick Engleman revealed the DNA findings to Ellis, who was being held at the Allen County Jail on a cocaine dealing charge, but Ellis denied being at the scene of the homicide and clammed up.
So Engleman started monitoring Ellis’s jail calls. Ellis called a woman and asked her to gather up some money so he could “be gone,” because the FWPD was about to charge him in a case. He advised her “not to say anything stupid on the phone or about his case,” court documents said.
Then Ellis called his father and asked him to contact his girlfriend and tell her not to talk to police.
That evening, Hennan had gone to a work-related get together and told a co-worker he was going to buy a gun, court documents explained.
A co-worker saw him step out to take a phone call. According to cell phone data analyzed this March by FWPD cell phone tracker, detective Luke MacDonald, there were 21 phone calls between Hennan and Ellis from 4:33 p.m. to 6:34 p.m. on that day.
Just before he died, Hennan sent a text “Im out here where u at” At 6:40 p.m., likely after the two (alleged) shooters were running back toward the park, the shooting was called in to 9-1-1.
Ellis, like Underwood, was charged with two counts of murder and robbery, a Level 5 felony. Ellis has his initial hearing tomorrow. There’s still a warrant out for Underwood, but no doubt FWPD homicide, with the help of Vice & Narcotics and the Gang Unit, will find him.
Comments