***MEDIA ADVISORY***

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 10, 2014

MOORE SENTENCED TO 120 YEARS FOR SALEH'S MARKET HOMICIDES

Media Contact: Curtis T. Hill, Jr. (574) 296-1888

On April 10, 2014, Elkhart Circuit Court Judge Terry Shewmaker sentenced Kevin Moore to 120 years imprisonment in the Indiana Department of Corrections. Moore pled guilty but mentally ill to two counts of Felony Murder for the fatal robbery attempt of Saleh’s Market on September 5, 2013 when Pawan Singh and Jagtar Singh Bhatti were both fatally shot.

Pawan Singh and Jagtar Singh Bhatti were well-liked within the neighborhood, according to Saleh’s Market employee Bill Sinclair, who testified at the sentencing hearing. Sinclair described Pawan and Jagtar as generous people who often extended credit or gave food to customers who did not have enough money, including Moore himself. In the days immediately following the murders, the community expressed its grief by holding a vigil and writing memorials on the outside walls of the market. Since the murders, the market installed bullet proof glass at the check-out counter, distancing itself from the customers it served. Sinclair informed the Court that Jagtar was a primary caregiver to a special-needs daughter.

Pursuant to Indiana statute, Moore was evaluated by a medical doctor prior to sentencing. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Francisco, who argued for the 120 year sentence, pointed out that the examining doctor did not definitively diagnose Moore with a mental illness, and in fact noted that Moore’s symptoms may have been the result of voluntary drug abuse and malingering. Francisco described the killing of Pawan Singh as “execution style,” as the autopsy report concluded that Pawan Singh died from a contact gunshot wound to the back of the head.

In fashioning the 120 year sentence, the Court observed that Moore had four prior felony convictions and three prior misdemeanor convictions, and that all but one of those convictions were for crimes of violence. Moore’s co-defendant, Richard Gross, also pled guilty to two counts of Felony Murder and is scheduled to be sentenced on May 1, 2014 at 8:30 in the Elkhart Circuit Court. Like Moore, Gross faces up to 130 years in prison.

The investigation was led by Detective Richard Brewton of the Elkhart Police Homicide Division. Elkhart County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney David Francisco and Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Vicki Becker prosecuted both cases on behalf of the State of Indiana.

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“Under Indiana law, all persons arrested for a criminal offense are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.”