Court records: Parking lot fight outside of west side bar led to deadly 2022 shooting
A night out with family members turned deadly during a parking lot fight outside a bar on the west side of Indianapolis, according to investigators.
Ten months after the fatal shooting, 28-year-old Mario Pena was extradited back to Indianapolis on Thursday and is now facing a murder charge. Luis Medina-Hernandez, 30, was killed in the early morning shooting in the 6300 block of West 34th Street on Oct. 16 of last year.
Investigators found surveillance video of 10-15 people fighting in the parking lot before the shooting. The video showed that during the fight, a man walked up behind Medina-Hernandez and shot him at close range in the back, according to the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department.
Detectives spoke with several witnesses, including Medina-Hernandez's wife and other family members. The family was out together at the bar, with some members preparing to leave and others ordering from a food truck in the parking lot before Medina-Hernandez was killed.
The fight was sparked when one man yelled at a vehicle that was about to back into a pedestrian in the parking lot. The pedestrian thought the man was yelling at him and they started fighting, according to the probable cause affidavit for Pena’s arrest.
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Several other people got involved in the fight, witnesses said.
"She then went on to say that Luis (Medina-Hernandez) got out of the car with the intention to fight to defend his family,” the affidavit reads.
Another witness from the parking lot provided police with a video they took of the shooter’s car as drove away. Two days after the shooting, the investigator received an anonymous tip with information that was partially correct on the suspect’s license plate number, according to the affidavit.
Police used this information to track the vehicle, which had been stopped for a traffic violation in June of 2022. Body camera footage from the traffic stop showed Pena driving the vehicle. He looked “identical” to a man a witness identified as the shooter in a video from the bar, the affidavit reads.
The Marion County Coroner’s Office determined Medina-Hernandez was shot in the back and declared his death a homicide.
Pena was charged in connection with the shooting in March and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was arrested in Texas on an unrelated charge and held in custody until he was extradited back to Marion County, where he was booked Thursday.
An attorney for Pena was not yet listed in online court records before publication of this article.
Contact Jake Allen at jake.allen@indystar.com. Follow him on Twitter @Jake_Allen19.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indianapolis crime: Man arrested in deadly Oct. 2022 shooting
