A former Anderson police officer was acquitted for his role in an Indianapolis shootout while off duty in 2025 after his attorney raised a claim of self-defense.
Maurice Magee was found not guilty on two counts of criminal recklessness on June 24. After two days of bench trial in Marion County, Magistrate Judge Peggy Hart’s conclusion was succinct.
“I’m not quite sure the State’s burden has been met,” Hart said just before she rendered the verdict.
Most events at the center of the case weren’t in dispute. Instead, the court was asked to judge whether Magee acted reasonably as he tried to retrieve his stolen car, and whether he posed a substantial risk of bodily injury by firing his gun at the alleged thieves.
In the prosecution’s telling, Magee acted as a vigilante. The defense said that he used his police training to investigate a crime and protect himself from two assailants who have never been identified.
At around 4 a.m. on May 19, 2025, Magee woke up at his Indianapolis home and found his Dodge Challenger missing. He could see its location thanks to an Apple Airtag that he kept inside the vehicle. As Magee followed its movements in his girlfriend’s car, he called Indianapolis police to report the theft.
He soon encountered a snag. Magee couldn’t make the report, the dispatcher told him, because the car was registered under his uncle’s name. Magee called his uncle and walked him through the process of filing a police report, according to a clip of body-worn camera footage shown at trial.
Magee’s defense attorney, Jarod Brock, said that his client felt it necessary to locate his car immediately because his experience as a police officer led him to believe that the car would be quickly sold for parts or otherwise destroyed.
Magee continued to follow his Challenger as it moved west across Indianapolis. He called his brother-in-law for help, and just before 6:30 a.m., the pair crossed paths with the stolen car in the 600 block of Woodruff Place West Drive on the city’s east side.
The Dodge was traveling in the opposite direction of Magee, who drove across a grassy median to block its path. He got out of his car armed with an AR-15 and ordered the two men inside the vehicle to step out.
The Challenger instead veered away from Magee and its occupants began shooting just before they collided with Magee’s brother-in-law’s pickup, destroying a nearby fence. Its two unidentified occupants exited from the driver’s side of the crumpled car and fired multiple shots before they turned and ran.
Magee fired one round at the two men as they fled, according to footage from multiple nearby doorbell cameras. That bullet has never been found.
At least 10 neighbors called 911 about the chaos. One bullet pierced an eight-year-old’s bedroom window, and a forensic firearms analyst testified that the round didn’t come from either Magee’s or his brother-in-law’s firearms.
Prosecutors suggested the situation could have ended differently if Magee hadn’t taken matters into his own hands. The men could not have known that the barefoot plainclothes man who ordered them out of the car was either a law enforcement officer or the car’s owner, deputy prosecutor Zachary Lanning argued. Nor could they have known that the pickup’s driver, who was wearing a ski mask, was his brother-in-law.
Jarod Brock, Magee’s defense attorney, countered that the Challenger’s occupants were responsible for the escalation.
“Just because he gets out of the car with a firearm on him, doesn’t give anyone the ability to just shoot in a neighborhood and spray bullets (that) go through a little girl’s bedroom,” Brock said. “…They were the ones willing to light up an entire neighborhood because they were stopped by someone for stealing a vehicle,”
Brock also pushed back against the prosecution’s contention that Magee couldn’t have known whether the men were still an active threat when he fired. At least one of the men fired a round as they ran off, and a total of eight seconds lapsed between the last of their seven bullets and Magee’s lone shot. His brother-in-law testified that he feared for his life.
“My client only fired one shot. That shows restraint, not recklessness,” Brock said. Magee’s shot prompted the thieves to run off, ending the altercation, he said.
Under Indiana’s self-defense statute, a person can use reasonable force to protect themselves from imminent danger so long as they didn’t provoke the altercation. Deadly force can be considered reasonable if a person believes their life is in danger.
The Anderson Police Department put Magee on leave after the shooting and he resigned in August 2025. He had been with the department for about two years.
Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for IndyStar. She can be reached at rhmurphy@indystar.com.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Former Anderson officer found not guilty in 2025 stolen car shootout
Reporting by Ryan Murphy, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
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By Ryan Murphy, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
