VERDICT: Murder charge ditched in favor of reckless homicide in Drexel Avenue drama

Allen County, Ind. ---By all accounts, Jaskaran Singh had broken up with his girlfriend of a month when he shot her at his back door on Feb. 28 of last year.

Singh, sitting at the Allen County Jail since then, always maintained he never intended to shoot Katiza Binti Mohamed-Sayad, a 25-year-old mother.

This week, Singh was found not guilty on the murder charge brought by the state, but instead of found guilty of reckless homicide. Reckless homicide carries a much lower sentence. Compare 45 to 65 years for murder to one to six years in prison.

The jury deliberated for an hour on the gun enhancement which can add up to 20 years on a sentence and couldn't make a decision. Mistrial on a gun enhancement is almost unheard of.

Singh's maximum sentence for the Felony 5 reckless homicide is six years. Sentencing is scheduled for June 29.

Two days after the breakup, Katiza showed up at Singh’s home on Drexel Avenue around midnight, “banging on the door.”

Singh was startled, he said, and “scared,” particularly after his roommate told him there was a “black dude” standing outside nearby. He presumed “the dude” was with Katiza.

Singh, 22 at the time, exchanged text messages with his roommate and then made the decision to go to his room at the back of the house and get his .45 caliber 1911 handgun, a gun he’d never before fired, he claimed.

He went to the back door, holding the gun in his non-dominant left hand while he swung open the door with his right hand, a move the prosecution said would have been awkward.

With the safety off, one bullet was fired hitting Katiza in the shoulder. The projectile traveled through her torso and killed her within one or two minutes, according to court testimony from Dr. Scott Wagner, a forensic pathologist.

Katiza managed to get to the driveway where Singh rushed to staunch her wounds and called an ambulance.

Singh characterized the shooting as a “mistake,” but what he really wanted to call it was an accident.

Lead deputy prosecutor Christina Gull and her second, deputy prosecutor Emily Snyder, said it was no accident, that it was murder and fit the state’s language that he “knowingly and intentionally,” shot Kitiza. 

Singh “was not some doe-eyed innocent here,” Gull said in court. “He knew exactly what he was doing that night.”

Singh took the stand in his own defense so the jury could hear from him why he shot someone at the backdoor just past midnight.

Sitting next to a Punjabi translator, the jury discovered that he had only lived in Fort Wayne for three months before the shooting, after spending about 4.5 years in California.

He’d come to Fort Wayne to work at his uncle’s gas station and lived in the Drexel Avenue home with a male roommate.

Singh bought the gun “because it makes you look cool.” There were photos found of him with a BB gun and the gun he used in the shooting that were shown in court. 

He also said the Drexel Avenue home on the southeast side of the city was in a “bad bad neighborhood.”

He’d purchased the gun while in Fort Wayne and wasn’t familiar with firearms, had had no prior training to use one.

During the month that he and Katiza were together, he’d been on a date with her five or six times, Singh said on the stand. Just after the homicide, he told Fort Wayne homicide detective Darrin Strayer that he broke it off after he found out that she’d been seeing other guys.

He said he didn’t know she was coming to his home and went to the door with a gun in his hand because he was “scared.”

He never saw the “black dude” who was reportedly with Katiza - it was not said how she arrived at the Drexel Avenue home - but he believed his roommate.

On cross examination, Gull pointed out that Singh was not initially honest about shooting Katiza, telling dispatch and police he didn’t know who shot her.

However, in Strayer’s probable cause affidavit, Singh reportedly told dispatch “my girlfriend got shot by me” and during his police interview with Strayer, he said: “I confess sir.” 

When Strayer told Singh Katiza was dead, “he began banging his head on the interview room table as well as the wall,” and asked for the death sentence.

Before closing arguments Thursday, Singh's attorney, Robert Scremin asked Allen Superior Judge David Zent for a “lesser included” charge of reckless homicide to which Gull objected. 

Zent said he didn’t agree with all the points made by Scremin, but would allow the charge, giving the jury a choice between murder and a Level 5 felony.

Scremin’s points: Singh said the shooting was a mistake. He tried to help Katiza by staunching her wounds. Singh called 9-1-1 and waited for police at the scene. Singh lacked proper gun training and, in fact, had never shot the gun before that midnight drama. 

Answering the door with the safety off the gun was an action that could be called “reckless,” hence, it was a better description of what occurred, Scremin argued

But if he were to have his way, Singh would be found not guilty because he said SIngh had no intention of killing Katiza.

Defense attorney Quinton Ellis served as second in Singh's defense.

On