INDIANAPOLIS – I have come back to this city looking for answers.
For nearly six years, I lived and worked here, crisscrossing the streets of Indianapolis as a journalist. I walked the canal, attended the Indy 500 and ate and drank on Mass Ave. Some weekends, I would drive down I-65 to the south side, to shop in the parking-lot swaths of suburban Greenwood.
And many days, I stood on the grass on the near northside, in Tarkington Park, in the searing heat or biting chill of football season. That was where I met Richard Donnell Hamilton.
He was the kind of neighborhood hero that you will find in every city in America, if you are willing to see. The kind of person who reaches beyond himself, beyond his family. Who reaches above the expectations the world has for someone like him.
I knew him as Coach Nell.
Coach Nell founded and ran a youth football league called the Indy Steelers. He taught football, and a lot more, to boys in the heart of Indianapolis.
For almost 20 years, Coach Nell trained a generation of boys to expect something of themselves, something more than what the world expects for them – here in a city where one-fourth of all homicide victims are younger than 21, where the first three people killed in the new year were teens.
I followed Coach Nell and his Steelers for more than two years. I followed them to practice and games, yes, and also to the park where they ducked gunfire, and to funerals for their teammates’ parents.
I interviewed them on the field, in their homes, in the nearby Martin Luther King Community Center. I listened to them talking, laughing, cheering, my digital recorder running.
Fourth & Goal: An IndyStar documentary on the kids everyone counted out
Coach Donnell Hamilton started the Indy Steelers youth football team 15 years ago. His goal was simple: Mute the echoes of gun violence so children can learn a better way.
Mykal McEldowney, Indianapolis Star
Coach Nell was not just these boys’ coach. He was their guide and their champion. He loved on them and challenged them to become better men. He worked to keep them safe from gun violence.
My colleague and I chronicled their victories and losses, on and off the field, for a special report and an Emmy-winning documentary. I left for a new job. Coach Nell led the Steelers to even greater success.
Then something happened that no one could have expected. On Jan. 11, Coach Nell was shot and killed.
He was not in Butler-Tarkington, the city neighborhood where he and his boys grew up on a knife’s edge, but in Greenwood, the suburb 14 miles away where I used to go to the mall. It was a foggy, rainy evening, and he was the passenger in a white cargo van. His wife was driving.
Police believe he was the victim of a road-rage shooting – one of more than 60 that now happen every year on interstates in central Indiana alone.
Coach Nell was at the age when he looked forward to a life spent watching football. His own children were grown and gone to college. He had just secured a promise of a new practice field for the Indy Steelers. He was 43.
And so I am back in Indiana, in the raw cold of winter. I am here for Coach Nell’s funeral, but really, I am here – in this city and with the team whose stories long ago crawled up to live inside my heart – to look for answers.
How will these boys survive without this man? Many of them are as young as 7. Some who I met when they were that young now tower over me. But they are boys, still. How will they live without this man, their teacher, mentor, confidant, big brother, uncle, father and friend?
Who will carry the ball for Coach Nell? The staff of the program was solid, but this was not a coalition, it was the force of personality of one man. Who could replace him?
And in my heart, I want to know the thing that even police seemingly do not. Who killed Coach Nell? What happened on that rainy evening? How did a man who spent a lifetime building immunity to gun violence fall victim to this most American contagion? As much as anything else, I want to know why.
Tarkington Park is just as I remember.
It’s sprawling, with a few hills where Indy Steelers run drills. Coach Nell would stalk the field yelling commands. “Let’s go!” “Fill the gap!” “Widen out! Widen out!” “Use your hands!”
He believed in running his players, especially if they weren’t focused on the field. “We can run all day,” he would warn.
Up the hill and back. Up. Down. Up. Down. Bear crawls and burpees.
Those little legs would get tired, and sometimes their owners would want to quit. “Get up!” he would yell if a player tried to tap out.
Since the first, the Indy Steelers came mostly from the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood. They would start at age 7, play until high school.
Since the first, they have called themselves the Hit Squad. It’s their calling card. They hit hard. They play hard. They go all in. That’s the only way to play.
Before games, dressed in their black and yellow uniforms, I would marvel at the hype up. They would gather in a circle, bounce and yell as loud as they could.
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
While the Steelers could run drills on grit alone, they needed somewhere to run. And Tarkington Park was tired.
So in 2016, Coach Nell started strategizing. Fundraising. Politicking. And it had finally paid off.
Tarkington Park, which sits in the shadows of the Martin Luther King Community Center on the city’s near northside, was finally going to be refreshed. The old dirt-and-grass field would be replaced with a real practice field, plus circular walkways, additional shelters and a farmers market pavilion. A $3 million Lilly Endowment grant would pay for it all.
The push had taken him seven years. Coach Nell had just gotten the news. It was Jan. 10. He called it a beautiful struggle.
“Woww… This is going to be great for the community. We’ve worked so hard for this. I’m want to thank everyone for there continued support of the Indy Steelers AYF,” he wrote on Facebook.
The next day, he was killed.
And now I’m walking the old dirt and grass without him, and thinking about the new field he will never see.
I hear them now, as I stand alone. Who are we? HIT SQUAD!
But the field is empty. Lying near the street, there’s an artificial flower bouquet in a vase, and seven battery-operated mini candles.
In the middle of the field, there’s a blocking sled left over from practice. You’ve seen one, on a kids’ practice field or in a movie: It’s that padded metal device built for players to ram into, to practice tackling.
From where I stand, it looks like two players, right down to their uniforms. Black in front, yellow in the back. Their heads bow in mourning.
I walk through the doors of the MLK Center and look around in delight. It has been renovated, walls knocked down and the lobby opened up to create a light-filled welcome center. Community space that feels like a great room. I must have been here 100 times before, but it’s all new to me.
Allison Luthe, the center’s executive director, is meeting with a couple folks. We say hello, and I go wait for her near a newly installed black and white mural by Indianapolis artist Justin Brown. It’s stunning and I’m happy to have the time to study it.
I have spent many days in this center. My work is also on the walls, framed copies of columns I have written as an Indianapolis journalist. And, of course, the Fourth & Goal project. I conducted most of my official interviews with Coach Nell from this building.
I can hear his voice now, echoing through the space his determination helped grow.
After all, Coach Nell was a hustler himself.
He had gone to college on scholarship, but he got into trouble. He did time in prison for weapons and drug charges.
When he returned home, dreams of the NFL erased, he worked hard to support his family and his team, first doing construction, coaching and then becoming an entrepreneur. He needed the flexibility of setting his own schedule because so much of his time revolved around the Steelers.
The MLK Center became his home base. This is where the Indy Steelers would grow from a ragtag crew of coaching fathers to an organized football league that welcomed hundreds of Hoosier youth.
Coach Nell learned to connect with city leaders, civic leaders, nonprofit organizers and those in the religious and education communities. He built enough connections and enough dollars to keep his players safe, fed, uniformed and on the field.
He helped establish Tarkington Teen Work Crew, a summer program that takes kids from the neighborhood and gives them paying jobs cutting grass and cleaning parks. He was “that dog.” Up the hill and back. Over and over. Relentless.
He built so much at the MLK Center that it came to feel as if he owned the place, though of course Allison Luthe is the one who runs it. The kids and staff would jokingly call Coach Nell Luthe’s bodyguard.
Now in the light-filled lobby, Luthe emerges to greet me and I realize her defender is gone.
Coach Nell’s absence has not felt real to me until this moment, when I hug her and say the only thing I can: “I’m sorry.”
I have so many questions. Luthe has only some of the answers.
Luthe said Coach Nell and his wife, Tiffany, had started a logistics business on the side. They had a cargo van to carry deliveries. Sometimes they would drive to the suburbs, or even make quick runs out of state.
On Jan. 11, Hamilton and his wife were on a delivery run in Greenwood.
According to Indiana State Police, Tiffany Hamilton was driving the van. They took the County Line Road exit and turned to cross the interstate. Police say a single shot was fired.
Luthe has talked with Tiffany, but mostly to offer assistance in planning his service. She is on call for anything.
As we talk, I watch her still in business mode – organizing, facilitating, leading. She sometimes has to pause to direct staff.
We are now sitting in the center’s renovated community room in comfortable chairs positioned against the front windows overlooking Tarkington Park.
It is the day before Coach Nell’s funeral. I ask her if she has cried.
“Oh, yeah,” she says. “Lots.”
She starts to cry. I do, too. We sit and wipe tears away with our fingers while quietly staring out at the park.
Then I learn something else about the investigation of Coach Nell’s death.
Police are no longer examining his van. They had dropped it off at his home, but his wife could not stand seeing it in the yard, this van, the place where he died.
She had called Luthe for help, asking if someone could put a tarp over it. Luthe, instead, sent a worker to pick it up.
It’s sitting here now, in the parking lot, just out back.
“I have not been outside to look at it,” Luthe tells me.
We decide to go together.
There are no shattered windows in the van. We cannot even see a bullet hole.
The white Dodge Ram 3500 ProMaster is only dirty, streaked from travel. The tires are caked with mud. A signed receiving invoice is resting on the dashboard. It notes the delivery was a hand-unload. It’s dated Jan. 9.
I try to envision Coach Nell riding here, sipping from the 44-ounce Styrofoam in the passenger’s cup holder. I try to erase the image of him slumped in this same seat.
Instead I imagine him riding in this van, with his wife, cruising down I-65 in the fading light of a winter evening.
Later on, I’ll drive the same route myself, looking for answers I won’t find.
Greenwood and its 60,000 people sit in Johnson County, just outside the edge of Indianapolis. It’s a donut suburb. It’s also a place where six months before Coach Nell’s death, a gunman killed three people at the mall, and the proverbial “good guy with a gun” was lauded by police as a hero for fatally taking out the shooter.
I’ll drive the off-ramp where Nell’s van came to a stop. There are no surveillance cameras at the exit.
I’ll drive on the interstate back to a friend’s house, thinking about the statistics I have read. According to Indiana State Police, Central Indiana had nine interstate shootings each in 2018 and 2019. By 2020, that number grew to 23 and exploded to 65 in 2021. In 2022, ISP documented 66.
Even after I’m gone from this state, there will be no movement on the case.
The only detail released is a description of the car – gray or silver with tinted windows – and a call for anyone who may have dashboard cameras to come forward.
I’ll file public records requests – for investigative and at-the-scene reports, and audio of the 911 call – anything to help make more sense of what happened. Citing a statute that allows police to decide whether or not their work is subject to the public records law, the state will deny my request.
I’ll talk to Greenwood’s police chief and he, too, won’t release any investigative material because he doesn’t want to jeopardize the case. He tells me there’s a license-plate reader half a mile away, but police don’t believe the vehicle passed it after the shooting.
“It’s extremely sad that this man lost his life, and the irony in it is just not right,” Chief James Ison says. “It’s not fair.”
He remembers responding to the scene of the shooting that night. “It could have been me and my wife,” Ison says. “You don’t have to do anything wrong or be engaged in any type of wrongdoing for some idiot to pull out a gun and shoot you in the back of the head.”
I’ll talk with Sgt. John Perrine of the Indiana State Police. He can give me few other details about the case. “We had 66 interstate shootings that our detectives are investigating in all of 2022,” he says. “A lot of those are still active, too.”
He’s been a police officer in Indiana for 20 years. “Until recently, it was very uncommon for us to respond to a road rage gunfire incident,” he says. “Now, every single day, at least one time a day, we get a call of somebody displaying a firearm in a road rage situation.”
I think about how defeating it all seems. That a man can be swept away by the thing he spent a lifetime trying to stop.
Then I think about Coach Nell. Up the hill and back again.
So I ask Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb’s office if he’s been apprised of the increase of road rage incidents in his state. I ask if he’s concerned about the spike. I ask if there’s any possible connection between the surge in shootings and the law he signed last year – the one that eliminates a license requirement to carry a handgun.
I ask what Holcomb has to say to the millions of Indiana residents who hit the road daily and are worried about their safety. I ask if there are any policies or procedures being introduced to address this violent road rage trend.
The next day, I ask again.
I receive no response to these questions.
But the reporter in me wants answers. So do those who love Coach Nell.
“This was random – everybody should be worried about it,” Indy Steelers team mom and photographer Lacey Nix tells me when I chat with her later. “This could be you, this could be your kid, this could be any of us. I hope for these boys in the program, who already don’t trust the justice system, I just feel that they need this. They need to see that things can be solved and they need to see that there is justice for the coach.”
Coach Nell’s cousin, Kendall Hamilton, will tell me: “That’s the hard part about this. We’ve got to trust the authorities and we’ve got to trust God to bring justice. We need people to step forward – people who know things and people who saw things – we need them to embody the courage that Donnell had and come forward and do what’s right.”
The January air seems to blow around my memories of warm-afternoon team barbecues and fish frys the Indy Steelers host on the black-top parking lot here at the MLK Center.
The center’s marked vans, the ones that would haul the kids to their games, are idle. There are no excited boys horseplaying while piling in to pursue the next victory.
Luthe and I wander around Coach Nell’s van, surveying for details state police won’t share. We peek in the windows.
Sitting in the cluttered console above the glove box are some Club butter crackers, a medicine bottle and a picture of the Indy Steelers. I wonder if that’s the last image he saw before he died. Honestly, I hope it is.
As Luthe and I walk away from the van, cold and sad, bells begin to toll from the steeple tower of the nearby North United Methodist Church. I feel a chill that has nothing to do with the temperature.
I am sitting in my rental car – the Kia Forte’s engine running to keep me warm – outside Olivet Missionary Baptist Church on the northwest side. It is the place to turn in Indianapolis when lots of bodies are expected.
I spot team mom Takkara Delaney and her son, Tyree, being dropped off in front of the church. I know this family well. Three of her four sons have worn Indy Steelers uniforms. I exit my car to hug them. The warm embraces are familiar; we’ve shared so many. Tyree is now huge and I say so. Later, I remind him that no matter how big he gets, he’s still my baby.
“I’m OK. We’re OK,” Delaney says, seemingly trying to convince herself. “He was my brother so I’m here to lay him to rest.”
I gather my belongings and try to gather myself, my stomach in knots. I sign the funeral registry and head straight to the front.
Coach Nell lies in a light blue casket with silver handles and accents. The Indy Steelers logo embellishes the inside. I am one of the first people to arrive.
Coach Nell looks dapper and peaceful, dressed in a royal blue suit. Around his neck is a braided rope gold chain with a black coach’s whistle attached.
A nearby table holds trophies, medals and photos from his high school and college football career. On the same table are trophies signifying the championships the Indy Steelers have amassed.
The visitors become an unrelenting line that will snake the length of the sanctuary.
At 10:45 a.m., Coach Nell’s family, all dressed in royal blue – the same color he wore on his wedding day – enters the church. On two large video screens, he appears – as a baby, a youngster, playing football in high school and college, his wedding, becoming a daddy. And, of course, coaching the Indy Steelers.
By 11:07 a.m., it is almost as if Coach Nell’s wife, Tiffany, just realizes. She wails in loud, short bursts of surprise and anguish, piercing the soft gospel that plays in the background. Her sons take turns holding her.
The church’s sanctuary seats more than 1,000. Yet the large choir stand behind the pulpit is opened for dozens who arrive later and will not find an open seat. Indianapolis has come to pay respect.
The speakers begin. Friends and teammates from his college days at Western Kentucky University. Relatives. His children. His cousins, who call themselves brother-cousins.
He was brutally competitive, even at a young age, I learn. He would keep his brother-cousins up all night to beat them at video games. If they wanted to get any sleep, they knew they’d eventually have to lose.
Coach Nell left to-do chore lists for his children with explicit instructions that could not and should not be ignored. I chuckle, remembering the notes my Black mother left on the kitchen counter.
When he was playing college ball, Coach Nell met Joseph Jefferson. Jefferson, joining the team as a freshman, had the nerve to say he’d be taking Nell’s spot at linebacker. Nell, replying, didn’t miss a beat: “No, you’ll be backing me up.”
The church erupts in laughter.
Each speaker came from a different part of life. But each had one consistent thing to say. Coach Nell was dedicated to the Indy Steelers.
The more I hear, the more I understand this man. This neighborhood hero.
“Donnell lived a life of service,” his uncle, David Hamilton, would say. “He was an advocate for change. Rather than just complaining, he went into action to make change. … Donnell may not be with us physically, but his desire for change and to improve a community is a call for action that we should all strive for.”
The Rev. Wayne L. Moore takes the pulpit and offers news that elicits the most applause. Some attendees stand and wave their hands in happy agreement. This all-state and all-conference linebacker will not be forgotten. This Indianapolis giant will live on.
“The football field that will be put in at Tarkington Park, the practice field, the field where he once played on dirt, will now be a certified football field,” Moore says during the eulogy. “And it will be named in his honor.”
A beautiful struggle, indeed.
I am in my rental car again, on a trip through the past.
I have been to this cemetery before, where I have witnessed other burials.
My old house is close, less than 3 miles. The university where I attended classes to earn a master’s degree is around the corner.
But the trip is less than peaceful. Funeral escort patrol cars, with sirens blaring, blow past us to clear each intersection. I imagine the flashing lights of police officers racing toward Coach Nell’s van.
We reach the 38th Street exit, and pass a looming blue sign with white lettering and a large white cross:
PURPOSE OF LIFE.
It’s a church on nearby Kessler Blvd.
Purpose in life, I wonder: Is it a question, or a demand? What is your purpose in life? What was Coach Nell’s?
Five days after his death, on Jan. 16, Indy Steelers players and families convened at the MLK Center. The federal holiday that recognizes Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is typically a day of service and giving at the center. But this year it was a day of loss. The players gathered to share stories about what Coach Nell meant to them. They released balloons in his honor.
The funeral procession seems to miss a turn. I know the way into this cemetery, and we’re not on the path. Then it sinks in. Before the cemetery, we’re taking Coach Nell past Tarkington Park.
Some black, yellow and gold balloons, limp and lifeless after being caught in the limbs, still hang from barren trees at the MLK Center.
Richard Donnell Hamilton is buried in Section 93-A, an area of the sprawling Crown Hill cemetery framed by large trees and with few headstones. It is a quiet, unpopulated place to rest, though life dictates that others will join him here.
His three sons, Isaiah, Richard Jr. and Dontaye, in matching black and royal blue paisley tuxedos, place white roses on top of his casket. As Coach Nell is lowered into the ground, his daughter, Dynia, hovers over the hole sobbing: “Daddy. Daddy. Daddy.”
Someone in the crowd yells: “One more time for coach!” The players know exactly what to do.
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
“Who are we?”
“HIT SQUAD!”
Coach Nell never made it to the NFL, but decades later, the NFL finally noticed him.
After our report about the Indy Steelers in 2021, the Indianapolis Colts organization and players became boosters. Linebacker Darius Leonard donated money to the team and invited them to meet owner Jim Irsay and other players.
A few months later, the Colts would pay for Coach Nell and his wife to attend the Super Bowl in Los Angeles.
On Feb. 13, 2022, Super Bowl Sunday, I sent him a message at 9:26 a.m.
“Hey Coach! Just thinking of you today and feeling so grateful for all the blessings coming your way. I hope you and Tiffany have an outstanding Super Bowl experience. You earned it! Meeting you and writing about the Steelers will remain one of my favorite professional accomplishments. Keep reaching and striving to make a difference for all of those beautiful children…Enjoy the sun and soak it all in. Much love to you and my Steelers family.”
He responded at 10:52 a.m.
“Thank you so much Suzette. If you guys hadn’t done that story I know we wouldn’t be able to be here I appreciate you.”
It would be the last time I had any contact with Coach Nell.
After Coach Nell died, the team paid for his funeral and hosted a repass at its headquarters and practice facility.
Hundreds who were at the funeral and cemetery now sit at round tables in the Indiana Farm Bureau Football Center’s banquet hall mingling and eating pulled pork, beef brisket, green beans and macaroni and cheese. Big screens flash photos of Coach Nell with his Indy Steelers players and teams over the years.
I watch as the kids run drills, attempt field goals and lob the pigskin on the indoor turf, opened to them for a reprieve. They are shrieking, running and laughing. Like a day at the park.
I am grateful they have the distraction. Football, family and fellowship – something that finally feels normal amid all the sadness.
Cameron Harden, 14, a self-described night owl, tells me it was around 1 a.m. on Jan. 12 when he received a call from a teammate informing him Coach Nell was dead. His first response: “Stop playing.”
Because in his eyes, Coach Nell was larger than life. Invincible. Strong. Untouchable.
Cam ran downstairs, told his dad and broke down crying.
“It’s been rough, but I’m trying to hang in there for coach and our team,” he says. “I grew up around him since I was a little boy. I grew up with him so it hurts different.”
Cam tells me he hopes to take his positions as cornerback and slot receiver with him to his high school team next year. He plans on taking Coach Nell, too.
“I’m going to play for him. I’m going to have his mentality. I’m going to always have his mentality everywhere I go. I’m going to always do everything for him,” Cam says.
But what was Coach Nell’s mentality? What lessons are left with these boys – for these boys?
“Go 100 at everything I do,” Cam explains to me. “Hard working. Never giving up. Going through everybody.”
The kids know what Coach Nell would demand. As do the coaches. It’s the execution that remains in question.
“Yes, we’re most definitely going to keep it going – that’s what coach would want us to do,” Chris Meriweather, a Steelers coach, tells me. “What that one man did by himself, it’s going to take all of us to do what he was doing by himself. We are just going to have to work together to keep it going for the kids.”
Because how do you build back a body when the heart no longer exists? How do you go through everybody when a body is missing?
I look at these players and I worry about the future of their organization. I watched for years as Coach Nell held them up. He palmed their heads and rubbed their shoulders as they attended the funerals of teammates and family members.
The half dozen coaches who surrounded Coach Nell every day are struggling for answers, too. I am told they held an impromptu meeting at the repass, the first time they are able to gather and even consider the future.
None of them want to lead; none of them think they can do it justice – at least not yet. But they do know they can’t quit.
Coach Reggie Martin is introspective when I ask how they will keep the Steelers afloat without their coach.
“No matter what we do, we can’t replace him – you’re not going to replace that energy or that presence, just that love,” Martin says. He clears his throat. Struggles for a moment.
“We can definitely attempt to keep pushing the agenda. We can definitely keep coaching. We can definitely still be a presence. …”
Martin’s words trail off. He hugs me and walks away with tears in his eyes.
I worry about them still, how they will keep pushing now. Coach Nell is gone.
But I still have his voice.
I talked to Coach Nell for hours. Hours and hours.
And for so many of those hours, the digital recorder in my phone was running.
Once I get the first message that he is gone – once I start to believe it, start booking flights, start packing – I open up those audio files and press play.
I listen as I walk my own neighborhood. I listen on the plane. I need to hear his steady voice again, even as the exercise haunts me.
In one of my interviews with him, we discuss the external dangers facing the team.
During a practice in March 2019, there had been a shooting at Tarkington Park. No team members were injured, but everyone was rattled.
His voice comes from my phone now. Coach Nell laments how difficult it was to explain to young children that if they hear gunfire, they must not run and should instead drop to the ground and stay still.
But Coach Nell never wanted to say too much about that. He didn’t want his story – or the story of his team – to be about gun violence, even if that was something they survived. He wanted it to be about putting kids on the right path.
Neighborhood heroes. It’s easier to imagine they’re not there. Easier to say it’s a problem with Black fathers. Easier to say that people would rather protest the police than care for their own communities.
But the easy argument is a lie. There’s a hero like Coach Nell in every big city in America. You just have to be willing to see.
In these hours of tape, there are many words I have never published before now.
I cannot ask Coach Nell the question I still haven’t answered. How did it happen that night? How could it happen to you? Why?
But as I listen, I find that years ago, he gave me a straightforward answer. A slice of the resolution I seek.
“It can happen anywhere,” he says, when we talk about gun violence.
It’s July 23, 2019. We’re sitting, talking, in the MLK Center. Coach Nell will live for three and a half more years.
“That’s what type of people that we have out here in the world. That’s the type of world we live in. … People have guns. The wrong people have guns.”
A final lesson, from the grave, for all of us.
Suzette Hackney is a national columnist. Reach her on Twitter: @suzyscribe.