Conjecture and gossip lead the discussion on why young teens, Essix Robinson and his brother, Zy Rel, were in a vacant home on Bowser Avenue on Aug. 23 of last year. The ‘bando,’ as abandoned homes are called, and identified by the boys’ grandmother as 4423 Bowser Ave.,was the scene of a shooting between Essix, then 14, and Jorge Mendez-Cornejo. The shooting left Mendez-Cornejo wounded, according to a news release from the Fort Wayne Police Department.

Michael Barker, a kid from the neighborhood who was best pals with now convicted murderer Anthony Lopez, might not have known what his friend was going to do when he walked into the woods with victim William Kintzel. But chances are he did that evening around 7 p.m. on April 10, 2022.

What he heard was the shooting death of Kintzel after he’d been subdued by blunt force, something revealed in the October 2022 trial of Lopez who was convicted and sentenced to 67 years for murder plus another 20 years for using a gun to commit the crime. Kintzel’s body was discovered four days later when a teenager, now 20, took the stand Tuesday to say he was 17 when he and a friend were walking through the woods around 7 p.m. and stumbled upon the dead man.