This is an updated version of a story we published yesterday, that includes new information.
Four members of one family were killed in Indianapolis around 4:00 AM on January 24th. The victims include Kezzie Childs, 42, Raymond Childs Jr, 42, Elijah Childs, 18, and Rita Childs, 13. Kiara Hawkins, 19, and her unborn baby boy were also killed. Another teenage boy was found seriously wounded nearby. On Facebook, Hawkins says she was due to give birth on February 1st. Hawkins seems to insinuate that Elijah Childs is the father of her baby, though this is unclear.
On the morning of January 25th, police announced that they apprehended a 17 year old, but they could not identify him because US law shields underage suspects. They would only say that the suspect is not the teenager who was found wounded.
On January 26th, police announced that the wounded teenager and the seventeen year old suspect are both other children of the Childs family. Police say that the suspect had been in an argument with his father the day before and shot all his family members with “a draco gun, a handgun that shoots rifle rounds.”
The Childs’ three sons were once part of a hip hop band called NuStreet. However, more recently, Elijah Childs was publishing violent gangster rap music under the name Savoe, and had videos on Youtube. His albums, Dreams to Nightmares and King of the Jungle, are for sale on Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon.
Savoe repeatedly brandishes a Krinkov style Kalashnikov rifle with no buttstock in his videos. However, the publisher of the videos, Jus Real Records, includes warnings on some of the videos that all the guns are non-functioning props. For whatever reason, these warning messages are probably false.
Based on the description used by the police, it seems very likely that the gun used in the videos is real and the same gun used by his younger brother to allegedly murder his family. The gun is apparently a Century Arms Draco 7.62mm x 39. This type of gun is sometimes referred to a “Baby AK” in gang culture.
This was the worst mass shooting in Indianapolis, since the “Hamilton Avenue Murders” of 2006. The Hamilton Avenue Murders refer to the killing of seven people in one house by two black males, James Stewart and Desmond Turner. The victims included four adult Latinos, and three Latino children aged 11, 8, and 5.
Indianapolis saw a dramatic surge of violence in 2020, and 2021 is off to a very bad start. The city had 154 homicides in 2019 and 215 in 2020.
In the the video clip below, the interviewer tells Savoe that there are people who would like to commit violence against him because of his music. Savoe laughs and holds up his Kalashnikov with two magazine taped together. The massacre may been committed using the exact same gun Savoe is holding in this clip.
He has several rap videos that are full of violent imagery and lyrics. The same Kalashnikov with a short barrel and no buttstock appears over and over. They can be found on the “Jus Real Records” Youtube Channel.
