INDIANAPOLIS — The family of the man accused of fatally wounding an IMPD officer testified today that it started noticing his mental health and behavioral changes before the murder.
Elliahs Dorsey admitted firing the fatal shots that killed Officer Breann Leath on April 9, 2020, as she responded with a team of officers to an eastside apartment as the result of a domestic dispute call.
The woman at the Wellington Square Apartments called for help in ejecting Dorsey from her unit due to his erratic behavior.
Dorsey confessed to firing shots through a closed door that struck Officer Leath in the outer hallway.
Dorsey’s ex-girlfriend told jurors she broke up with her longtime boyfriend five months before the killing due to his increasingly bizarre behavior.
The ex said Dorsey accused her falsely of being unfaithful after the breakup and came to her house late the night before the killing to harangue her and ask to be reunited.
“He’s losing it. He’s stalking me. I’m afraid,” the woman texted Dorsey’s mother that night.
While the woman noted Dorsey took to wearing a bulletproof vest and was likely armed the night he came to her parent’s house, she said she understood his concerns about his personal safety as she agreed Indianapolis had become a violent city.
Dorsey’s uncle, Fred Owens, testified that his nephew called his aunt for help the afternoon of the killing, pleading with her to, “call the police now,” because, “somebody was trying to kill him.”
Owens said in retrospect those calls came just as IMPD officers were being dispatched to Dorsey’s location and later Owens and his wife saw the breaking new report about Leath’s killing and surmised it was their nephew.
Several defense witnesses recounted Dorsey’s history of playing football from the age of six through college and whether he could have received unnoticed, undiagnosed and untreated head trauma.
Larry Dorsey Sr. explained to jurors that his son had played football while growing up eventually performing as a hard-hitting middle linebacker at Arlington High School.
Dorsey said he never observed any concussion symptoms due to his son’s football career.
The father testified that in the days leading up to the killing his son expressed concerns about his own safety, claiming, “Somebody’s out to kill you, too.”
Questions from the jurors revealed that Dorsey Sr. was never concerned enough about his son’s behavior to refer him for a medical evaluation or to take his guns away.
Dorsey’s older brother, Larry Dorsey Jr., said Elliahs began wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying guns while expressing paranoia in public situations.
“’Somebody’s out to get our family,’” Dorsey Jr. recalled his brother telling him in a phone call the night before the murder.
Dorsey Jr. said he tried to reason with his younger brother but, “I was just talking to empty space,” and the paranoia continues to this day as Dorsey sits in jail awaiting trial.
The defense team has sought to portray its client as mentally ill or insane at the time of the killing.
The Marion County Prosecutor withdrew its attempt to seek the death penalty upon conviction after two court-appointed psychiatrists determined Dorsey showed signs of mental illness.
Jurors are faced with four potential verdicts: Guilty; Not Guilty; Guilty but Mentally Ill; or, Not Responsible due to Insanity.
The trial has recessed until Tuesday morning in anticipation of two days of testimony from psychiatrists who have examined Dorsey.
