Inset: Deborah Benefiel (Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department). Background: Intersection of West 38th Street and Georgetown Road in Indianapolis, Indiana, where Benefiel allegedly shot a man to death during a road rage incident (Google Maps).
Authorities in Indiana arrested a 23-year-old woman after she allegedly shot a man to death because he honked at her for not driving through a green light in a road rage incident.
Deborah Benefiel stands accused of murder and criminal recklessness in the Friday shooting death of 21-year-old Kentrell Settles in Indianapolis, according to the Marion County Prosecutor”s Office.
A probable cause arrest affidavit obtained by Law&Crime said officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department responded to the intersection of West 38th Street and Georgetown Road for a shots-fired investigation. When they arrived they found Settles inside a 2006 Chevrolet Malibu suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest. He was rushed to the hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.
Detectives found evidence of a single gunshot in the rear passenger side window. They also recovered a BB gun under the driver’s seat. Settles’ girlfriend, who was in the car at the time of the shooting, said he was driving her to her parents’ house to drop her off when they came up to a red light. When the light turned green, the girlfriend said the Ford SUV in front of them did not move, so Settles honked his horn and drove around it.
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“The green Ford SUV followed with the female driver yelling, screaming, and throwing her hands around while inside the vehicle,” the complaint said.
Settles started to pull into a nearby plaza when the woman in the SUV, later identified as Benefiel, fired one shot into the Malibu, cops wrote. The girlfriend hopped in the driver’s seat and drove the rest of the way to her parents house.
Cops were able to identify Benefiel and her vehicle, which had a cartoon dumpster fire bumper sticker and a “Good ‘illegible’ Today” bumper sticker on the SUV, through license plate readers.
Undercover officers spotted the vehicle and saw someone take off the stickers from the SUV and throw them into the trash, per the complaint. As Benefiel was being taken into custody, she told an officer the gun in question was in the apartment in a bag. Cops found a .40-caliber Glock handgun in a purse, according to the complaint.
An autopsy confirmed Settles died from a gunshot wound that entered his back and tore through his lung and heart. The manner of death was listed as homicide.
Benefiel declined to speak with detectives after her arrest. She remains in the Marion County Jail without bond. She’s slated to appear in court on Tuesday.
“This case is yet another tragic example of a simple dispute on our roadways turning deadly over what amounts to nothing. A moment of anger should not cost someone their life,” Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears said in a statement. “This kind of senseless violence is something prosecutors and police are seeing far too often. We will continue to work together to hold those who commit senseless acts on our roadways accountable in the courtroom, but as a community we must find ways to respond to conflicts with reasonableness — not violence.”
