INDIANAPOLIS — Tashawnna Summers had doubts from the start when her son Ezekiel told her he had fathered a baby with a girl he knew from Warren Central High School.
”She’s the one that told him. She’s the one that made him believe it. She’s the one who said, ‘You got me pregnant,’” said Tashawnna, who counseled her son to proceed with caution until the results of a DNA test could be confirmed. ”He was more just wanting to be a father. I think the idea of just being a dad was what he wanted more than what I had to say, what she had to say.”
That baby was born in late March of 2019.
Ezekiel Summers was murdered while visiting the apartment of the baby’s mother on April 6.
The killing of Ezekiel Summers is the latest case profiled on “Indy Unsolved.”
”The setup was real,” said Tashawnna. “Everybody involved was a friend. He trusted them.”
Summers said her son’s timetable of the alleged conception never added up.
Nor did the jealousies of a friend of the mother or the young woman’s standoffish attitude toward Ezekiel.
”I think where Zeke came in and started to want to take on the responsibilities of being a father, that’s where the waters turned murky,” said Summers. ”Zeke was just posting online that he was the father of her baby and she messaged back, ‘You just mess up everything. You don’t know what you did.’
”It would be the people who were having the secret affair. It would be the little crew of the secret affair people,” speculated the slain teen’s mother. ”And if she had it set up to where she was doing this with this person and then, ‘I’m dating this one on the secret side,’ and then here comes Zeke throwing it all up in the air, that’s a lot of people you don’t want exposure on.”
The night he died, Ezekiel, 19, was called after he got off work in Kokomo to bring a bottle of Karo Syrup to the Kingston Arms Apartments on Indianapolis’ northeast side, a 47-mile and a 50-minute drive, because the infant he believed was his son was supposedly constipated.
”There was gonna be a party so he was supposed to be there, do that responsible stuff because I always told him, ‘Handle your business before pleasure,’” said Tashawnna, “so, he was handling his business first and then he was gonna go to a party.”
Ezekiel was dropped off at the apartment of the baby’s mother by a friend who had driven to Kokomo to retrieve him but immediately left.
”He texted two people, his friend and a girl that was with them, and when he texted those two people they read it but no reply,” said Tashawnna who has her son’s cell phone. “So I kinda feel like you left him there, like if he said, ‘Come get me now,’ he literally said, ‘Come get me now.’ And nobody came. Nobody replied.”
Tashawnna said she questioned the young mother about what happened next.
”What I was told by the young lady, somebody came to the door, they pressed their way in and she grabbed her son and she ran upstairs and left them have at it from what she stated. Left Zeke downstairs. And from what she said, when she was upstairs, she called her momma.”
Tashawnna was astonished that somebody who had to call Kokomo to get her son to bring a bottle of Karo Syrup would call her mother instead of the police when the teen she claimed was the father of her son was under attack downstairs in her apartment.
”The night of the incident, the fact that you said you went upstairs and you called your mother instead of the police. First hit on my radar was like, you did something wrong or you allowed something wrong.”
IMPD homicide detectives discovered blood splattered in the apartment as the coroner found cuts on Summers’ arm.
Ezekiel staggered a half-block from the apartment down a sidewalk before collapsing with a fatal bullet wound.
Tashawnna has made her findings available to IMPD homicide detectives but is willing to entertain an alternative theory.
”Either he had been doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing illegally or in that room and they killed him that way or it comes down to this baby and the secret relationship that was going on and they got a baby out of it and they don’t want to know.”
Ezekiel had no criminal record.
”I want people to remember my son as somebody who deserves justice because he didn’t do anything to deserve what he got,” said Tashawnna. “He was set up and a setup is not fairground.
”He was killed and taken from me and my family for stupid reasons, no justification, no excuse.
”When this is all exposed there will be no reason to justify, 'I killed him because of this'. It will be, ‘I was high, I was emotionally unstable, I was jealous and I was stupid.’ Mark my words.”
The little boy Ezekiel Summers insisted was his son would have just turned 5 years old.
If you know anything about the murder of a teenager at the Kingston Square Apartments on a Saturday night in 2019, call Crime Stoppers at (317) 262-TIPS where your information could be worth a $1,000 reward.