VERDICT: Guilty for murder in 2017 homicide; open investigation for other shooter

FORT WAYNE, Ind. ---It’s going on nine years when Fort Wayne Police were called to an apartment complex at 440 Fairwick Lane on a shooting and a crashed car.

There they found Nicholas Hennan, 36, dead at the wheel of his black 2000 Buick Regal, six bullets to his torso.

The case went cold until Fort Wayne homicide detective and cold case sleuth Brian Martin took a look at it.

Aug. 3, 2017, Nicholas Hennan's car crashed into a tree at an apartment complex on Fairwick Lane after he was shot dead.

Charges were filed against Carlos Ellis, Jr. 19 in April 2025 and a friend of his, now an “unknown” suspect, for murder, felony murder and attempted robbery. Since then, the latter two charges were dropped.

Ellis was found guilty of murder Thursday in Allen Superior Court after a three-day trial, Judge Fran Gull presiding. His sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 7. Ellis was also found guilty of Indiana's firearm enhancement which can add up to 20 years to a sentence.

Although there was no Ring doorbell at the apartment complex, a woman who knew the “unknown” suspect and lived in the complex said he’d shown up and told her to get her kids inside before the shooting, according to Martin’s probable cause affidavit. Later, he apparently bragged that he’d “caught his first body.” 

She reported that Ellis, known as “Los,” showed up and threatened that “mother—!*#s better not say nothing,” this after the unknown told her not to “tell anyone about the shooting,” court documents said.

Deputy prosecutor Tasha Lee relied on text messages and jail calls and what she called an incriminating photo found of Ellis about an hour before the shooting to make her case in front of the jury Thursday in closing arguments.

Carlos Ellis, Jr. now 27

At 5:25 p.m. on Aug. 3, 2017, Ellis foolishly posted a photo of himself with guns and a wad of, most probably, fake money on social media.

At 6:24 Hennan sent Ellis a text via Ellis’s girlfriend’s cell phone he was using at the time.

“I’m out here where u at” Hennan asked Ellis. Between 4:33 p.m. and 6:34 p.m. there were 21 communications between the two men.

Then silence.

Prosecutors said Ellis got in the back seat of Hennan’s car and shot him three times, one shot so close to his skin there was stippling. That means it was only six to 18 inches away from the body.

The other shots from the once-named but now “unknown” shooter came from outside the vehicle and killed him on the other side of his body.

The female witness said they rifled through his pockets and then fled into the woods headed to other apartment complexes nearby.

Hennan crashed into a large tree 288 feet away from where they fired the shots, Lee said.

The prosecution argued that a pink and white iPhone belonging to Ellis’s girlfriend found on the floor of Hennan’s back seat proved Ellis was there, just by the existence of those 21 texts and calls between the victim and defendant in the preceding two-hour period.

Robert Scremin, defense attorney for Ellis, said finding Ellis’s DNA on the cell phone didn’t prove a thing, particularly when no other DNA belonging to Ellis was found in the backseat of the vehicle where he had supposedly shot Hennan.

“DNA lasts for years,” Scremin said.

Phone calls made from the jail begging for bail money in June 2018 and asking a woman to get him some money so he could “be gone” are also inconclusive, particularly since he wasn’t charged with Hennan’s murder until 2025, Scremin said. Obviously, he wanted bail money for another charge.

“He was never ‘gone’,” Scremin told the jury because “there he is seven years later charged with murder,” and pointed to Ellis at the table.

Ellis’s girlfriend told detectives that Ellis and his accomplice had robbed Hennan for drugs. She thought it was for an ounce of cocaine.

But Hennan apparently thought he was meeting people to buy a gun, according to the probable cause. No gun was ever produced for this crime, but ballistics tell the story that there were two different 9 mm guns used to shoot Hennan.

Lee found something meaningful in Ellis’s online search for a 9mm handgun two days before the shooting, but buying guns is not an unusual activity anywhere in the U.S. 

“There’s no evidence that Nicholas Hennan and Carlos Ellis even knew each other. I hope this is not how we convict a young man in Allen County in 2026,” Scremin said.

Charges were dropped against the “unknown accomplice” in February “without prejudice” which means if new evidence or a witness becomes cooperative, the state could reopen the case.

The Probable Cause will not publish the name because charges were dropped, but the curious will find it in the probable cause affidavit.