Damien Center Resident Points Firearm At Shortridge Student, Ryan Mears Says No Charges

Ryan Mears the Marion County Prosecutor declines to prosecute 33 year old male who pulled a gun a teen.

Marion County parents just received another reminder that the man who holds the keys to the courthouse does not view their children’s safety as his first duty.

On September 29, IMPD documented a case in which a 33-year-old man living at the Damien Center allegedly pulled a gun on a student from Shortridge High School. The report lists CAD number IP2600079498, incident type intimidation, officer E. Snowden. Pointing a firearm at another person is a Level 6 felony in Indiana. Doing so with a deadly weapon rises to a Level 5 felony. The victim was a minor. The adult was not. Ryan Mears’ office declined to file charges.

That is not a close call. It is a choice. Prosecutors have always possessed discretion, but discretion was never meant to function as a standing policy of non-enforcement when a grown man brandishes a firearm at a high-school student. The American tradition, from the common law forward, treated the protection of the young as a basic duty of the state. Reagan put it plainly: the first purpose of government is to protect the innocent. When that purpose is subordinated to other priorities, the result is not compassion. It is disorder that falls hardest on ordinary families who cannot afford private security or private schools.

Mears has spent years signaling that certain categories of cases will not be treated as crimes. Low-level drug possession, certain abortion-related matters, and now an armed intimidation of a student have all been filtered through the same lens. The pattern is consistent. Resources are reserved for the cases that fit the preferred narrative; the cases that do not are left on the desk.

Parents at Shortridge do not get to vote on whether the man who pointed the gun walks free. They only get to vote on whether the prosecutor who made that decision keeps his job.

The Damien Center address is relevant only because the office chose to publicize the location while declining the case. Residence at a particular facility does not create a legal exemption from the criminal code. Indiana statutes do not contain a clause that suspends felony intimidation when the suspect lives at a social-service address. If the evidence was insufficient, the office can say so. If the evidence was sufficient and the decision was still no, then the public is entitled to know the real reason. Silence leaves the impression that some victims are simply less urgent than others.

November is the remedy the founders built. Voters in Marion County will decide whether the prosecutor’s office continues to treat armed threats against students as optional paperwork or as the serious felonies the legislature already defined.

The choice is not abstract. It is the difference between a student who can walk to class without a stranger producing a gun and a system that treats that event as an administrative inconvenience. Law that is not enforced is not law. It is a suggestion, and suggestions do not protect children.