LAFAYETTE, IN — Shots fired from Elijah McLean’s gun killed Laportia Shenett and Kadeisha Ross inside Shenett’s Cochise Drive apartment on Feb. 28, 2025, he admitted and prosecutors allege.
McLean didn’t fire the gun and wasn’t at the scene. He didn’t even know the gun was used in the killings until the next day. But he admitted he did help the accused killer, 51-year-old Seyene Vargas, ditch the gun. He field-stripped the pistol into three pieces, and along with Vargas, he said he tossed the pieces at three locations in Lake County.
McLean pleaded guilty in January to assisting a criminal and will testify against the accused killer, Vargas — whose daughter is the mother of McLean’s two sons.
McLean’s family and Ross’ family members attended Wednesday’s court hearing and all spoke kindly about McLean. Ross’ family members also shared their pain and grief caused by McLean’s actions, but they did not speak of being angry with him.
Their words of encouragement are part of the reason McLean received a lenient five-year sentence.
“You have wrecked two families’ lives,” Senior Judge John Potter said during the 90-minute sentencing hearing. “I’m not sure how much you realize this before today, how many people’s lives you wrecked by doing this.
“When somebody comes to you and says, ‘I need to borrow your car and your gun. And please hold my cell phones.’ … What did you think was going to happen?” Potter rhetorically asked during the hearing. “She wasn’t going to a PTA meeting to sell cookies for the school fundraiser.”
Potter agreed with McLean’s parents that he wants to help people, wants to be kind and is sometimes easily duped. McLean has not previous criminal history, doesn’t have a drug problem, graduated from high school and has some post-secondary education, which Potter said is unusual for someone facing a serious charge like assisting a criminal in murder.
“I don’t think you’re a lost cause,” Potter said before sentencing. “But I also don’t think you should walk out of jail today, either.”
Instead, McClean received a three-year prison sentence, which he will serve in community corrections, initially at work release. After completing that portion of his sentence, McLean will serve two years on supervised probation.
McLean already has more than a year of incarceration credit for his pretrial detention, so his time in community corrections is slightly less than two years.
“You have wrecked two families’ lives,” Potter said. “I’m not sure how much you realize this before today — how many people lives you wrecked by doing this.
“You have the rest of your life, and there are two people who do not,” Potter said. “You are a part of the reason for that. So you got to do some living and make up for that because you took them out of the world; you took them away from family. That’s on you. You will need to remember that … You’re going to have to make up for part of some of their loss, especially with those four kids — yours and theirs. This is never going away for these families.”
Potter wished McLean luck before ending the hearing.
Before being sentenced, McLean addressed the court and the Shenett and Ross families.
“I would like to sincerely, wholeheartedly apologize,” McLean said. “I know there’s nothing I can do or say to bring back the lives that were lost.
“I was so careless and mindless in my decision. I think about it every day how this not only impacted my life, but also the victims’ beautiful lives and the family of the victims. My involvement in this situation was indirect and accidental, to say the least,” he said, noting that he has shamed and embarrassed his family.
“From this day forward, I want to make a difference by helping the way I probably could have that night. I’m not a gang member. I had no idea what the co-defendant was planning to do.
“I was very naive to the type of trouble another individual could get me indirectly involved in,” he said. “I would never involve myself in anything like that intentionally.”
U.S. marshals arrested Vargas in Seattle more than two weeks after the killing. She is charged with two counts of murder, obstruction of justice and false information. Her trial is scheduled for June 9 in Tippecanoe Superior 2.
Reach Ron Wilkins at rwilkins@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @RonWilkins2.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Man sentenced to 5 years for his role in 2025 Lafayette killings
Reporting by Ron Wilkins, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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