A Hammond man was sentenced to a split 58-year term Thursday in a fatal drive-by shooting. His lawyer said he would appeal.
Kian Moore, now 23, would serve 54 years in prison with four years probation. A jury convicted him in October for gunning down Quinten Kendrick-Taylor, 23, of Hammond, who had just walked out of the house on Oct. 22, 2019.
“I can’t tell you who he was in the streets, (just) at home,” the victim’s mother Leila Kendrick said. “He was a good son.”
His young son and nephew saw the body, she said. He died quickly, but they have to live with it.
“We are the ones left behind to suffer,” she said.
Nevertheless, she recognized Moore was only 19 when he killed her only child. She prayed God could put him on another path, she said.
“I don’t hate you,” she said at one point. “I hate they have to see you behind bars, another Black man behind bars…think, be better.”
Kendrick-Taylor’s aunt Katherine Bates said her one son had been killed and she hadn’t gotten justice. Her nephew was like her “second son.”
He mowed her grass, shoveled snow, and helped his mom with a disabled relative. Bates said she didn’t know what caused his shooting. It was “so unfair he had to leave like this,” she said.
“I don’t know you, so I don’t hate you,” she later said.
Deputy Prosecutor Arturo Balcazar asked for a 60-year sentence.
Moore had juvenile adjudications (convictions) involving guns, he said. Kendrick-Taylor was killed within earshot of his extended family.
They “didn’t know each other” and there was “no history of dispute,” Balcazar said. The shooting was “unprovoked.”
Balcazar noted Moore responded, “I’m good,” when Kendrick asked him how he was when she first took the stand. It was “shocking,” showing he had no remorse, Balcazar said.
Moore was just being polite, defense lawyer Scott King said. Don’t read more into it.
The women’s “compassion” toward Moore was “not unheard of,” but “rather rare.”
“They should be commended for it,” King said.
King again argued it was unusual that the jury convicted him of murder, but acquitted him of a firearms enhancement that could have added up to 20 years to his term.
Judge Natalie Bokota later said it was late at night when the jury came back with the guilty murder verdict and they looked “very displeased to be kept longer”.
Three people were charged in connection with the case — Moore, the alleged shooter, Christian Buchanan-Purdiman, the driver, and Leila Shojaee, the latter’s then-girlfriend, a passenger.
King argued the evidence didn’t point to Moore as a shooter. He alleged Purdiman-Buchanan was the “architect” and made plans to take the gun to Indianapolis. Moore was drunk when they were joyriding.
Bokota said later the jury returned the verdict and the evidence showed Moore pulled the trigger. He was on probation for a gun case at the time.
Moore read a letter giving his condolences to the family, but maintained his innocence, saying he was “singled out” for blame and “labeled as a gang member.”
Bokota said the shooting was “senseless.” There was “no provocation.”
Authorities alleged in a charging affidavit that Moore thought Kendrick-Taylor was a rival gang member and targeted him in retaliation after Moore was shot in August 2019.
Bokota ruled in a motion in limine that prosecutors couldn’t bring it up in the trial, due to the lack of direct evidence they had that Kendrick-Taylor was in a gang.
Balcazar and Deputy Prosecutor Shannon Phillips argued at trial that the evidence — including license plate readers, cameras and cellphone data — put the trio at the scene. Moore’s post-shooting Facebook messages allude to an “opp” shooting — that of an opponent.
Shojaee testified that she saw Moore open fire from the back seat.
“Stupid (expletive),” she said Moore said after the shooting, adding the mood “felt somewhat celebratory.”
Afterward, they went back to her apartment. Buchanan-Purdiman later threw the revolver’s bullet shells off a bridge and the couple went to Indianapolis where he tried to sell the gun.
A probable cause affidavit said Hammond Police were called around 11:10 p.m on Oct. 22, 2019 to the 1300 block of Liberty Court.
A witness said they heard three gunshots just after Kendrick-Taylor went outside. Surveillance video caught a white 4-door car in the area at the time, caught on a license plate reader.
Court records alleged Moore and Buchanan-Purdiman were linked to the East Haiti gang in Hammond. Kendrick-Taylor was linked to the rival GUWAP gang, according to an affidavit.
Gun violence between the two gangs flared up summer and fall 2019 in Hammond and East Chicago in the run-up to Kendrick-Taylor’s death, records allege.
Buchanan-Purdiman was sentenced in February 2023 and has since been released. Shojaee was sentenced Nov. 3 to time served.
