A postal worker was fatally shot as she delivered mail in Indianapolis, authorities said.
Angela Summers, 45, was gunned down Monday afternoon as she delivered mail near East Michigan Street and North Sherman Drive, police told the Indy Star.
Summers, who became a steward for a local union after joining the US Postal Service in June 2018, later died a hospital. Investigators have yet to determine a motive or a suspect in the fatal shooting, the newspaper reports.
“This is a tragedy,” Paul Toms, president of the National Association of Letters Carriers’ Indianapolis branch, told the newspaper of the slaying. “Senseless.”
Summers was a “well respected” employee who enjoyed her job, Toms said.
“She loved carrying the mail,” he said.
Investigators have not said what led up to the shooting, according to the Indy Star. But Summers died from a gunshot wound to the chest and her death has been ruled a homicide, the Marion County Coroner’s Office told CNN.
A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Indiana declined to comment to CNN, citing an ongoing investigation.
Anyone found guilty of first-degree murder in the death an on-duty federal employee can be sentenced to death or life in prison. Just four postal workers have been killed during workplace homicides between 2013 and 2018, CNN reports, citing Bureau of Labor statistics.
A $50,000 reward is now being offered by the US Postal Inspection Service for information leading to an arrest in the slaying.
Postal Inspector Team Leader Andrew Brandsasse said in a statement to The Post that the US Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the USPS, is “actively investigating the incident.”
