A grainy surveillance video provided by police shows the backs of two people running side by side on a street at 7:03 p.m. Jan. 1. Roughly a half hour after the recording, police would find 39-year-old Shane Furman dead on West Walnut Street.
Indianapolis Metropolitan Police on Thursday announced homicide detectives are seeking to identify the two people recorded in the video as persons of interest in the unsolved killing of Furman on New Years Day. The two people may be suspects or witnesses, police officials said.
Officers found Furman wounded in the 2200 block of West Walnut Street about 7:30 p.m. while in route to another call. Medics pronounced him dead.
Furman’s family also are asking people to come forward with information about the killing so they can have closure.
“We really want people to come through and say something. This was a human being,” Shane Furman’s dad, Jon Furman, said. “His life mattered.”
The announcement and video is the first piece of evidence released to the public about the investigation into Furman’s death. His family said they are also speaking out so Shane Furman’s death isn’t lost in the wave of violence that’s occurred in the city since his killing. The city has recorded 59 homicides since the start of 2022, according to IndyStar analysis of police data.
Shaynee Furman, his sister, said they’re not sure what happened that day. She said her brother lived around the corner from where he died, on North Belmont Avenue. She and her father said Shane Furman had a lot of good qualities, like his intelligence – particularly his knack for calculus.
Jon Furman remembers Shane Furman and his siblings used to have contests about who could figure out answers to calculus problems the fastest.
“I don’t know where they got that from,” Jon Furman joked.
Shaynee Furman last heard from her younger brother hours before he was killed. He called her to see if she could visit. The plans didn’t work out, she said. She now wonders if his fate would have turned out differently if she had seen him that day.
“That’s the main thing that beats me up,” she said. “Maybe if I went to see him that day, maybe he wouldn’t have been walking down the street or he might’ve wanted to come over to my house for New Years.”
Shane Furman had four children, one son and three daughters — one of whom is turning five years old Friday.
The family has experienced a number of losses in the past year in addition to Shane Furman – they’ve lost a grandson, uncle and a brother-in-law. They hope they can get some closure in the form of justice for Shane Furman’s death.
“He wasn’t perfect, but he was perfect to us,” Shaynee Furman said. “He didn’t deserve it and it wasn’t nobody’s job to play God.”
Anyone with information about the killing is asked to contact Detective Jesus Soria Jr. at 317-327-3475 or [email protected]. Anonymous tips can also be made through Crime Stoppers of Central Indiana at 317-262-8477.
Contact Sarah Nelson at [email protected] or 317-503-7514.
