INDIANAPOLIS — The young man lay on the cold asphalt of a tire shop parking lot, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender, his shirt and shoes stripped from his body. He had done everything asked of him. It was not enough.
Nathan Benjamin Trapuzzano, 24, a computer programmer, a devoted husband, and a father-to-be just five weeks from meeting his newborn daughter, was executed in the pre-dawn darkness of April 1, 2014. His crime? He was walking to pray the Rosary.
The men who killed him wanted something he didn’t have—money, a phone, or a card—so they killed him for the refusal to own what he didn’t carry.
The shooting occurred at approximately 5:50 AM in a parking lot adjacent to a tire shop near West 16th Street. A nearby resident reported hearing a single loud “pop,” a sound she dismissed as a backfire until she looked outside to see Nathan staggering before collapsing. He was found wearing only his jogging pants; his shirt and shoes were discarded on the ground near him, a bloody scene that initially bewildered authorities.
When police arrived at 6:00 AM, the victim was still alive, albeit conscious and in shock. He could not speak and was gasping for air. Officers noted a small-caliber or medium-caliber wound to his abdomen, but the absence of external bleeding gave them false hope.
He was rushed to Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital and immediately taken to emergency surgery. The surgical team fought the ravages of his wounds for nearly an hour, but at 7:40 AM, the young man who had never been in trouble, who charged by his brother, was pronounced dead.
Jennifer Trapuzzano, Nathan’s wife, woke that same morning to find their bed empty. His phone sat on the kitchen table; his favorite MP3 player was gone. She had a sinking feeling that defied his normal routine—he never took valuables, only his rosary.
She later grabbed her coat and walked the familiar route, hoping to meet him halfway. She turned a corner into a storm of flashing police lights and yellow crime scene tape that covered the pavement like a veil. She knew.
“Husband was going to be a great father,” his brother Michael said through tears. “He was moving fast in life. He was the fourth of five kids, but he moved like the eldest.
I looked up to him.”
The murder tape was grainy, black and white, but it captured the tragedy in churning frames. The video from the tire shop’s security system, installed after a recent burglary, showed Nathan power-walking along the street. Viewers saw a suspect or a newcomer break into a sprint to keep up with him.
Two men appeared to intercept the victim. The footage showed Nathan raising his hands until they were sky-high, complying with their demands. The pair backed him into the parking lot, near a chain-link fence, off-camera.
Then came the single gunshot.
“That’s the victim,” said an IMPD detective in the enhanced video presser. “Here comes the suspect now, running toward the victim. Here comes suspect number two, who acts as a lookout.
He is always looking out. They will have a chat around this side by the street. At some point, victim and suspect one will go over this general area, off-screen.
That’s when a struggle will occur and the victim is shot.”
The second suspect—the lookout—ran towards 16th Street before heading North into the residential neighborhood. The shooter ran West after Nathan dropped. Police called the attack “a senseless, unbelievable act of violence” and worried that they were dealing with privileged nationals or disconnected; the attack was brutal, but there was no I.
D. on the body.
For a week, the investigation stalled despite a massive public outcry and a mobile command post set up in the neighborhood. The police were flooded with tips, but zero solid leads surfaced. Then a break 18 hours after Nathan’s death came in the form of a 16-year-old male wounded in a self-defense shooting.
That teen, Simeon Raheem Adams, known on the street as “Red,” was taken to a hospital with a critical gunshot wound to the neck after he had shot three bullets at a man named Eric, who lawfully fired back in self-defense.
The ballistics from the 40-caliber shell casings at Nathan’s murder scene matched the guns stolen in a gun shop burglary that occurred about two hours before Nathan was shot. And they matched casings found near Nathan’s body exactly.
Detectives learned that Adams had been involved in an unsuccessful carjacking attempt at a strip club less than a mile from Nathan’s walk just 45 minutes before the killing. Eighteen hours after Nathan’s body had gone to the morgue, Adams was fighting for his own life in the same emergency room network.
When detectives once spoke to Adams’ cousin, Martez McGraw, he made an admission—he was there on the morning of the murder. He identified his own cousin instantly on the grainy CCTV. He told them that the 16-year-old had “run up” on Nathan and ordered him to stop.
Adams then required him to walk between the tire shop and the strip club, and made him take his shirt off. The killer’s guns and his actions were that of a military commander holding his own gun.
Red had been columned in the hospital for weeks, recuperating from the self-defense shooting. Upon his recovery, he was officially charged as an adult. The probable cause filing stated that Adams had “entered Nathan’s path and acted as a predator.”
For Adams, killed at a Call Kid: 30 years of age. The sentenced court left no mercy.
The hearing revealed a horrible history of a 16-year-old who had been charged with 29 serious youth felonies in the last six years, spent only 50 days behind bars. He was also the prime suspect in the gun shop burglary and at least three other armed robberies. At the time, an Indianapolis judge who handled juvenile matters said from the bench, “I expressed my extreme concern to probation about the handling.
There had been nine violations of house arrest—we let him that he was on a crime spree.”
“This is one of those cases where we prepare for the finality of death,” a detective stated later. “He had his hands up. he was complying.
And you still shot him.”
Simeon Adams pleaded guilty, not to killing—but to murder. On the date of his sentencing, the judge challenged him directly: “Do you understand that you took a young father’s life, who was worth a lifetime of sayings?” “No ma’am,” he answered.
No further objections.
He received the sentencing a 55-year prison term for the murder, and on a consecutive 12 years for the shooting of the other victim in the self-defense case, effectively guaranteeing he will be in his 50s before he can breathe free air. Under Indiana law, he can be eligible for parole after 27 years, meaning he gets out at 45, depending on good time credit.
Nathan’s sole assessor, Jennifer, allowed a high-profile GoFundMe to establish a fund for their newborn, Cecilia Marie. The $170,000 in donations took her through graduate school, from which she graduated with honors and as a Physician Assistant. She also helped establish the Nathan Trapuzzano Memorial Foundation, which supports children who have lost a parent.
The Foundation also sponsors the “Nate Walk,” a 5K in his memory, remembering his love of walking. At Ball State University and Ivy Tech, administrators have offered a full two-year scholarship to little Cecilia when she comes of age. She is now over a year old, a curious, watching girl, with her father’s eyes, says her mother.
Jennifer Trapuzzano holds a souvenir that freezes time—a voicemail. “I have a voicemail from him on March 31st, 2014. I listened to it over and over and over again.
His voice sounds so familiar, still like it could have been yesterday. I miss him. I miss everything about him.
In so many ways, it feels like he has only been gone for 10 minutes, and yet it feels like a hundred years.”
On a grainy surveillance tape, the world watches a young man raise his hands in surrender and die anyway. The family can only hope that the foundation of his own life, and his peaceful, forgiving heart, can outpace the violence that ended it. 16-eyed Adams remains at the Department of Correction.
Nathan holds his forever – a husband, an athlete, a classical scholar, a father who never got to hold his daughter.
