Incident: September 11, 2024, Indianapolis, Indiana. Footage released by IMPD: August 21, 2026.
Around 11:30 in the morning on September 11, 2024, Indianapolis officers were sent to the Somerset Apartments on River Road for a welfare check. A caller was worried about a woman who was not answering her phone.
While officers were still en route, dispatch updated them. A second caller said the woman was being held hostage inside an apartment. A neighbor had heard screaming.
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Officers knocked and announced and spent about ten minutes at that door working on 63-year-old Grant Brown to open it. You can hear it on the video — they are not leaving, they need to see her, they will call more resources.
Two things got established while that was happening. Brown was recorded telling the woman to tell them she was okay or he was going to shoot her. And an officer posted at the rear window saw the 9mm in his hand.
Then a sergeant forced the door.
Brown fired at the officers coming through it. Both officers returned fire and hit him twice, in the arm and the abdomen. He survived. As officers came in the front, the woman ran out the patio door to the officers posted there. She was not physically harmed and no officers were hit. Brown fired at least five rounds. His pistol was recovered a few feet from where he was taken into custody.
Now the footage.
Two patrol officers, no SWAT, no negotiator, and an apartment that loops — entry at the front, another way around the far side, so the interior comes back on itself. That is why you hear one of them call out to go back to back. One man covers forward, one covers the other approach, and they move as one unit. With an armed man they cannot see and a hostage somewhere in there, that is the right answer and it is not easy to do under fire.
The body-camera placement on one of these officers is genuinely bad. He is bladed to his work the whole time, which puts the camera off the problem, and for long stretches of this video you cannot tell whether he has eyes on the suspect or is shouting around a corner. That is not a small thing. A camera that does not cover what the officer is covering is the difference between a clean review and a two-year fight over what he could actually see.
The commands after the shooting are exactly right. He is down, he is armed, and they make him crawl out into the open where they can see his hands before anybody closes on him. You do not walk up on a man who just fired at you because he stopped moving.
Two officers fired inside an occupied apartment with a hostage in it, and the only person hit was the man who shot at them first. That is the outcome you hope for and do not get to count on.
The hostage’s name, age and relationship to Brown were never released. IMPD victim assistance provided her services.
A jury convicted Brown in June 2026 of attempted murder, two counts of criminal confinement with a deadly weapon and domestic battery. He was sentenced to 38 years. He went to trial — some coverage around the video release said he pleaded guilty, and that is wrong.
The officers’ round count has never been published. And the shooting itself was never publicly ruled on. Two years out there is no reported charging decision either way, which is not the same thing as cleared.
IMPD released this video on August 21, 2026, two years after the shooting and about a month after sentencing. The department has not explained the gap. Holding a critical incident video until a trial is over is the obvious reason, and it is still an inference, because IMPD never said so.
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