Olivia Brown and Darian Wiley built careers and friendships before a 2023 shooting left their relatives waiting years for an arrest.
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — For over three years, the people who loved Olivia Katherine Brown and Darian Jamar Wiley had memories, surveillance images and unanswered questions but no publicly charged suspect. That changed in July, when authorities accused 24-year-old Noah Brimmage of killing both friends after a night out in Indianapolis in May 2023.
The arrest shifts a long-running homicide investigation into the courts while also returning attention to the two people at the center of the case. Brown, 24, was a therapist with a master’s degree who was working toward professional clinical licensure. Wiley, 27, had studied construction management and was remembered as an energetic friend who loved music and golf. Their families had spent years wondering whether anyone would be held accountable after they were killed while Wiley was walking Brown back to her car.
Brown had followed an education path that reflected the helping profession she chose. She graduated from Columbus North High School in 2016, attended Ball State University and later received a master’s degree from Indiana Wesleyan University, according to her obituary. She worked as a therapist at the Emberwood Center in Indianapolis and was working toward becoming a licensed clinical social worker. Her family also remembered the less formal parts of her life: cats, books, exercise, vacations, cooking, sweets, shopping and tattoos. Her obituary described her as full of life and interested in helping others.
Wiley, known to relatives and friends as Ren, had his own ties to Ball State. After graduating as salutatorian from Arsenal Technical High School in 2015, he studied construction management at the university. His obituary recalled football, robotics and an ACE program among the interests that helped shape him before college. Outside work and school, Wiley enjoyed music, tried playing guitar and liked golf. His family remembered him most strongly as a social presence who enjoyed being with friends and making people laugh.
Their lives intersected on the night of May 5 and early morning of May 6, 2023. After going out, Wiley parked near his Indianapolis home and walked Brown toward her vehicle, according to court records and reports describing surveillance video. Two hooded people could be seen following them. The sequence was ordinary until it suddenly was not: the followers closed distance, gunshots were heard and Wiley was shot in the street. Brown made it to her car and apparently tried to leave, but authorities say she also was shot. Both died at the scene.
Police officers had been sent to the area shortly after 12:30 a.m. following a report of a person shot near East 21st Street and Central Avenue. They found two people with gunshot wounds near the north-side intersection. Early reports did not name the victims until the Marion County Coroner’s Office identified Brown and Wiley. Investigators later focused on the area around East 21st and Ruckle streets, where residents described hearing shots and seeing the aftermath. At that point, authorities offered little public information about who had attacked the pair or what had prompted the violence.
Neighbors expressed fear in the days after the killings. One resident told local media that the neighborhood had seen occasional robberies but that the double killing represented a different level of violence. Police asked the public for information, while relatives began a much longer wait. No immediate arrest followed. The absence of a public breakthrough became part of the story itself as months turned into years and the case remained unresolved.
That passage of time was especially difficult for Brown’s family. Her sister Hannah Carter later described what it was like to remain caught in uncertainty while ordinary life continued around them. She said the family feared that people would forget Brown and Wiley as the case went without an arrest. The concern was not simply whether prosecutors would eventually file charges; it was also whether two young lives would become reduced to an old homicide file as public attention moved elsewhere.
Behind the scenes, investigators eventually changed how the case was being handled. IMPD said its unsolved homicide unit took over about two years after the killings. Detectives went back through the evidence and tried to answer questions the original investigation had not resolved. When police announced the arrest in 2026, the department credited renewed examination of forensic material and different investigative approaches with helping detectives identify Brimmage, who was already incarcerated in southern Indiana on unrelated convictions.
Public accounts of the probable cause affidavit show why investigators came to focus on him. One significant piece of evidence was a gun belonging to Wiley that authorities say was discovered in a vehicle associated with Brimmage during a traffic stop the day after the homicide. Investigators also examined messages allegedly sent by Brimmage before and after the shooting. Reports describing the affidavit say the messages included discussion of robbing people before the killings and efforts to sell Wiley’s gun afterward. Those assertions are allegations by investigators and prosecutors and have not been established by a verdict.
Authorities also reviewed Brimmage’s alleged connection to other events from roughly the same period. Published accounts of the charging affidavit describe allegations involving a later shooting as well as a fire that damaged a house and vehicle. Brimmage previously pleaded guilty to arson and criminal recklessness in an unrelated case and was serving prison time when detectives identified him in the Brown and Wiley investigation. His earlier convictions are separate from the murder charges and do not by themselves prove the allegations in this case.
The new case includes two counts of murder. Court records cited by Law&Crime also list robbery resulting in bodily injury, three counts of battery by means of a deadly weapon and criminal recklessness. Police announced the arrest as the result of a long investigation rather than as a solved case in every respect. Criminal charges are accusations, and Brimmage retains the presumption of innocence on the new counts unless prosecutors prove them beyond a reasonable doubt.
For the victims’ families, that legal distinction means an arrest can be a major development without being the end of their wait. The case must proceed through the judicial system, where the defense may challenge the state’s evidence and prosecutors will have to establish their theory of what happened. No conviction in the Brown and Wiley killings was established in the public records and news reports reviewed for this article as of Aug. 28. The charging decision therefore represents the start of a prosecution, not a final determination.
There is another reason the investigation cannot yet be described as completely resolved. Surveillance material described by news outlets showed two people following Brown and Wiley shortly before the shooting. Only Brimmage has been publicly charged in connection with their deaths. Authorities have not publicly identified another defendant tied to that second figure, and reports announcing Brimmage’s arrest did not establish whether investigators know that person’s identity. The unanswered question leaves the families with a new criminal case but still not every answer about the final minutes of Brown’s and Wiley’s lives.
The developments of 2026 have nevertheless changed how their story stands. For three years, Brown and Wiley were the identified victims in a homicide with no publicly named defendant. They are now at the center of a pending murder prosecution, one built in part from evidence detectives say they reconsidered long after the first wave of investigative activity. Their families’ descriptions of them remain a reminder that the legal file is only one part of the record: Brown was building a career around helping people, and Wiley was building one in construction while cultivating the friendships for which he was remembered.
Police have said the renewed investigation reflects their commitment to pursuing older homicide cases even when an arrest does not come quickly. Whether the new prosecution results in a conviction remains for the courts to determine. For Brown’s and Wiley’s families, the three-year period without a charged suspect has ended, but the process of determining criminal responsibility — and the question of the second person seen in the surveillance account — remains unfinished.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 28, 2026.