Bloomington police arrest suspect in Sept. 26 murder

On Monday (Oct. 6), Bloomington police arrested a 26-year-old Bloomington man and booked him into the Monroe County jail on a charge of murder, in connection with a shooting in central Bloomington on the night of Friday, Sept. 26. That’s according to a news release issued by Bloomington police early afternoon on Tuesday.

The shooting took place near the intersection of West Howe Street and South Morton Street.

Arrested for the fatal shooting was Stephen Paul Dixon II (26). Dixon was also charged with connection with criminal recklessness in a separate incident involving a shot fired from a handgun.

Killed in the Sept. 26 shooting was Shawn Sullivan (29) of Bloomington. The official cause and manner of Sullivan’s death are still pending autopsy and toxicology results as of Tuesday morning, according to the Monroe County coroner’s office.

In the original news release from Bloomington police, Sullivan was described as “transient.” BPD defines “transient” in a general police order as someone “who lacks stable housing or employment and stays in one place for brief periods of time” and “someone who moves from place to place, just passing through the area, and is not staying for a long time.”

Tuesday’s news release describes how detectives were able to find Dixon and arrest him. On the night of the fatal shooting, video from a gas station at Kirkwood Avenue and Rogers Street showed a dark-colored Volkswagen Passat pulling in around 9:24 p.m. which was a few minutes before the victim was shot.

A man and woman got out, bought a couple of items, and left heading south on Rogers Street. Witnesses later described the shooter as matching the man seen in the gas station video.

Investigators were able to recognize the Volkswagen Passat as possibly the same car that was involved in another shooting—on Sept. 22 in the 1600 block of North Willis Drive. In that incident, someone fired a single round toward a home before speeding away. Security cameras in that neighborhood captured the car’s license plate, which was registered to a 30-year-old Bloomington woman.

Police then received tips naming 26-year-old Stephen Dixon II of Bloomington as the shooter, according to the news release. On Oct 6, officers spotted the Passat and started following it. After dropping off two children at Arlington Elementary School, the car stopped briefly near the earlier shooting scene, then continued south into Lawrence County.

According to the news release, when the car pulled into a gas station on Lincoln Avenue in Bedford, officers from Bloomington, Indiana State Police, and the Lawrence County Sheriff’s Office surrounded it. Dixon and the car’s owner, Kaila Simms (30), were taken into custody without incident. Simms was booked into jail on a charge of neglect of a dependent. The news release says when he was arrested that Dixon was carrying a loaded 9-millimeter handgun.

In the regular morning report of new jail inmates, the timestamp for Dixon’s book-in was put at 3:51 p.m. on Monday (Oct. 6). A little more than two hours later, at a “Traveling Town Hall” held at Jackson Creek Middle School, starting at 6 p.m., Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson was the first to break the news of the arrest.

Thomson put it like this: “You may have read that we had a shooting close to the Hopewell neighborhood. We are very pleased that we made an arrest today in that case.” She continued, saying, “I’m really proud of the police’s work in that case.” She added, “We are committed to keeping Bloomington safe, and our police department is more fully staffed than it has been in a long time.”