Final touches on latest Main Street mural
Portraits of Lincoln, Douglass and Kennedy unveiled downtown. Plus, court orders more time, more documents in Delphi murders appeal. Redistricting on the rocks? Charges filed in fatal shooting
Thanks for ongoing support from Based in Lafayette sponsor Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette. For tickets and details on all the shows and events, go to longpac.org.
FINAL TOUCHES ON LATEST MAIN STREET MURAL
The faces of Frederick Douglass, John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln now peek out from a short alley off Main Street, as the city and the Daughters of the American Revolution on Wednesday dedicated a mural commissioned to mark Lafayette’s 200th anniversary in 2025 and to anticipate the 250th birthday of the United States in 2026.
Detroit-based artist Zach Curtis painted the trio of portraits, chosen to represent famous visits in the city’s history, over the past 10 days on the west wall of 707 Main St.
“We try to really promote public art in Lafayette and here in downtown,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said. “This is another wonderful piece to add to that. I think a lot of people will stop here. … I just couldn’t be happier with the outcome.”
Diana Vice, who helped organize the project through the local DAR chapter with financial help from the city and Tippecanoe County, said the initial project was going to feature Douglass, an abolitionist and orator who made several stops in Lafayette during the 19th century, and Lincoln, who gave a whistlestop speech on his way to his inauguration in 1860.
“But (Curtis) threw in Kennedy as a bonus gift to our community after I mentioned our Santa wish list,” Vice said. “I guess I’m hard to say no to.”
Curtis thanked people the crowd who gathered for Wednesday’s dedication and thanked people who stopped by as he worked to ask questions and took pictures, posting them on social media to chronicle the progress over the past week or so.
“Everyone that I met here made me so humbled,” Curtis said. “You never really know when you come to a new town that you haven’t painted in, yet, how it will be received, how people interact with you. I really do feel like this is kind of a second home to me now.”
For more background on the mural, the artist and the history behind the portraits and each man’s connection to Lafayette, here’s BiL edition from last week:
CHARGES FILED IN SHOOTING DEATH ON NORTH NINTH STREET
Grace Fultz, a 20-year-old from Lafayette, faces reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter charges after prosecutors say she was playing with a handgun Oct. 15 when she shot and killed Dynasty Battle, 18, of Attica, in an apartment in the 900 block of North Ninth Street in Lafayette.
The prosecutor filed a series of charges Wednesday against Fultz, including reckless homicide, involuntary manslaughter, pointing a firearm and possession of marijuana, along with a sentence-enhancing charge of unlawful use of a firearm.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed with the charges, prosecutors say Fultz told police that she’d moved into the apartment a week earlier and had smoked marijuana before Battle and two others came over that day. According to the court documents, witnesses told police that Fultz had been playing around with the handgun, pointing it at people and waving it around.
According to prosecutors, Fultz told police that she’d loaded the gun before going downstairs to meet Battle and another woman. She told police she thought she’d unloaded the gun and said that she’d turned on a laser sight and was pointing it around the room and at everyone there. According to the court documents, Fultz said she was pointing the handgun at Battle when she pulled the trigger, and the handgun fired.
Battle died at the scene from a shot to the chest, according to police and coroner accounts.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Fultz remained in the Tippecanoe County Jail.
REDISTRICTING SPECIAL SESSION? ‘VOTES AREN’T THERE …’
Politico’s Adam Wren reported Wednesday that the leader of the Indiana Senate was signaling that a special session might not be in the cards.
From Wren’s report Wednesday morning: “Indiana Senate Republicans say they do not have votes to pass mid-cycle redistricting despite a pressure campaign from the White House, according to a spokesperson for Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray – but President Donald Trump’s allies are still demanding the matter comes up for a vote in a special session. ‘The votes aren’t there for redistricting,’ said Molly Swigart, Bray’s spokesperson.”
For the full report, here’s the way in: “Indiana Republicans don’t have votes to back Trump’s redistricting, Senate leader spox says. The news comes just days after President Donald Trump held a phone call with reluctant members.”
Gov. Mike Braun, who would be in a position to call a General Assembly special session, was still rooting for redistricting, posting this Wednesday afternoon: “I am still having positive conversations with members of the legislature. I am confident the majority of Indiana Statehouse Republicans will support efforts to ensure fair representation in Congress for every Hoosier.”
Indiana Democrats weren’t letting down their guard:
Locally, here’s a replay of where things stood with senators and representatives who have portions of Tippecanoe County in their districts, after Oct. 10 meetings Vice President JD Vance held with Republican caucuses in Indianapolis:
State Sen. Spencer Deery, a West Lafayette Republican who has been outspoken about his concerns about a mid-decade redistricting process, said Friday he stands by those earlier statements after the Oct. 10 meetings at the Statehouse. “I spent much of the day meeting with colleagues discussing the issue, including one meeting attended by the vice president and other White House officials,” Deery said. “While my concerns about the long-term consequences of normalizing off-schedule redistricting are well known, I felt I had a duty to participate in the dialogue.” In August, Deery said he was against a plan that “would clearly violate the concept of popular sovereignty.” “Rationalizing a mid-cycle redistricting by saying, ‘Democrats gerrymander too’ is an empty and irrelevant excuse,” Deery said at the time. “Instead, we are being asked to create a new culture in which it would be normal for a political party to select new voters, not once a decade — but any time it fears the consequences of an approaching election. That would clearly violate the concept of popular sovereignty by making it harder for the people to hold their elected officials accountable and the country would be an uglier place for it.”
State Rep. Matt Commons, a Williamsport Republican whose District 13 includes southern and western Tippecanoe County, said he continued to back the idea after the Oct. 11 meeting with Vance. Commons issued a statement in August that he believed Indiana had to defend against Democrats in California and other states looking to redistrict and shift policies in Congress. “I’ve promised to fight for rural Hoosier values,” Commons said at the time. “Redistricting is one way we can ensure our rural conservative Hoosier values are fairly represented in Congress.” Ahead of the Oct. 10 meetings with Vance, Commons posted a redrawn map that featured the potential for an all-red Indiana. “For too long, Democrats have taken advantage of the redistricting process to protect their own power while burdening Hoosiers with higher utility and healthcare costs. It’s time for a fair 9-0 map that truly reflects Indiana,” Commons posted on X. On Oct. 10, Commons said, “I thought the meeting was constructive with the vice president. He answered a lot of questions for people.”
State Rep. Mark Genda, a Frankfort Republican whose District 41 includes southern and eastern parts of Tippecanoe County, said Oct. 10: “No change on my position.” Genda told Based in Lafayette in August that “most, if not all” people he’d spoken with at that time thought redistricting was a bad idea. “To which I completely agree,” Genda said.
State Rep. Chris Campbell, a West Lafayette Democrat, sent a letter via her Substack telling constituents that “JD Vance returned to Indiana to strong-arm Senate Republicans into gerrymandering our congressional maps.” She encouraged them to continue to let Indiana House and Senate members know their feelings: “It can’t be overstated that a prime reason Indiana Republicans haven’t caved to Washington’s demands is that you’ve been loud and clear: Indiana doesn’t want new maps. … To my Republican colleagues in the Indiana General Assembly: I urge you to put the will of the Hoosiers above the will of Washington, D.C.”
Among others, Rep. Sheila Klinker, a Lafayette Democrat, has been against the idea. Sen. Ron Alting, a Lafayette Republican, and Rep. Heath VanNatter, a Kokomo Republican, have not committed publicly about it.
COURT ORDERED TO PRODUCE EXHIBITS IN ANOTHER EXTENSION IN DELPHI MURDERS APPEAL PROCESS
Looks like it will be sometime by mid-December that we’ll know the arguments Richard Allen’s attorneys will lean on in the appeal of his 2024 conviction in the murders of Delphi eighth-graders Abby Williams and Libby German.
The Indiana Court of Appeals on Wednesday set another set of deadlines and ordered the lower court to produce additional exhibits with the trial transcripts. The ruling came as a deadline passed Tuesday for Allen’s attorneys to file a brief outlining the arguments for an appeal.
The court’s order filed Wednesday set a 20-day deadline for trial court officials to prepare supplemental exhibits defense attorneys asked for tied to Judge Fran Gull’s pre-trial denial of a motion to suppress results of a search of Allen’s home ahead of his arrest and the exclusion of third-party evidence Allen’s trial attorneys tried to get into the trial to advance alternate theories about who might have killed Abby and Libby in February 2017. The appeals court then gave the Carroll Circuit Court five days to notify the parties once that’s done. The court then gave a new 30-day extension from that point for Allen’s attorneys to file the brief connected to the appeal.
The move follows a series of court-approved extended deadlines as Allen’s attorneys tried to sort through files connected to the trial and pretrial decisions.
Allen, 52, a former clerk at a CVS pharmacy, filed a notice to appeal in March. He is serving a 130-year prison sentence, after being convicted in November 2024 at the end of a four-week trial.
Allen was arrested and charged in 2022. Abby and Libby were found dead, with slashed necks, in the woods near Delphi’s Monon High Bridge Trail on Feb. 14, 2017, a day after they’d been dropped off to spend an afternoon hiking to the Monon High Bridge. Allen was arrested in October 2022, 5½ years after the murders – tied to the scene through a revisited case file related to his self-reported information to investigators in the days after the murders that he’d been on the Monon High Bridge Trail the day the girls went missing. The case against him was built around his admission about being on the bridge that day; an unspent round found at the crime scene that state police technicians determined came from a handgun Allen owned; a video of a man – dubbed “Bridge Guy” – found on Libby’s phone; and what prosecutors detailed as more than 60 confessions while Allen was awaiting trial.
Thanks, again, for support from the Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette. For tickets and details on all the shows and events, go to longpac.org.
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Ugh, once again Rep Commons can stick his "rural Hoosier values" where the monkey put the peanut.