A month after two people were shot and killed at a rural gas station on Johnson County’s far western border, no one has been arrested and the investigation is ongoing.
The Christmas Eve shooting was reported at 5:08 a.m., after a customer at the Circle K gas station near the State Road 37 and State Road 144 intersection discovered the aftermath of the shooting on the northside of the parking lot.
Ethan Bell, 18, of Martinsville, and a 17-year-old whose identity is not being released died at the scene, while Devon McHugh, 18, of Martinsville, survived a non-fatal gunshot wound.
Initially, police thought McHugh was the sole witness to the shooting but later saw, in a review of gas station video footage, that an unidentified man was getting gas at the time of the shooting, said Jeremy Roll, spokesperson for the Bargersville Police Department.
A few days after the shooting, Bargersville police released a photo of the male witness but still had not made contact with him by press time. Because the man was wearing a face mask and had a hood on, police don’t have a working physical description of the witness and haven’t been able to identify him, Roll said.
The man is not a suspect, but Bargersville police say his account could help them submit a strong case, Roll said.
Though that witness remains elusive, police did make contact with and question the main person of interest in the homicide, Levi Bradley Camplin, 18, of Morgan County.
But even with Camplin’s testimony and other information gathered in the past month, there are still unanswered questions that need to be addressed, said Joe Villaneuva, Johnson County prosecutor.
“There is a person of interest they have spoken with, but that interaction still left many important questions unanswered which would be necessary for my office to move forward with formal charges,” Villanueva said in an email. “While probable cause is the legal threshold to make an arrest or file formal charges, my burden of proof at trial is the much higher burden of beyond a reasonable doubt.”
At this point in the investigation, Bargersville police have identified the alleged shooter but are waiting to build a stronger case before making an arrest, Roll said. Missing pieces include the additional witness and evidence that is being examined at the state police crime lab, he said.
Johnson County and Morgan County sheriff’s offices and a Franklin Police Department evidence technician are helping with the investigation, Roll said.
Both Roll and Villaneuva say the small-town agency has done what it can with the resources it has and the limiting circumstances of the case, and Villaneuva is not concerned about the speed of the investigation, he said.
“Every homicide investigation goes forward at its own speed and whether or when they reach the level of a prosecutable case depends not only on the evidence already obtained but even more so the evidence which still needs to be obtained,” Villanueva said. “This particular investigation is no different, just as the passage of time doesn’t correlate with whether or not certain evidence should have been obtained.”
Bargersville police are working the case everyday, and the prosecutor’s office is following the situation closely, Villanueva said.
“We take the deaths of these two young men, as well as the third who was injured, very seriously,” he said. “Both BPD and my office want to hold whoever participated in this accountable, and have sufficient evidence at the time to clearly prove the crime(s) charged.”
Bargersville police ask that anyone who may have information about the unidentified witness contact Bargersville detectives at 317-714-4652 or 317-557-1402.
