Jarrell Pryor, 26, was found fatally shot early in the morning on Jan. 25
Alexis Hawkins and her boyfriend Brian Winston Jr. have been arrested in connection with his death
Pryor is being remembered by family for his sense of humor, dance moves and being a doting father
One Saturday evening in January, Jarrell Pryor was wrapping up his shift at a warehouse in Indianapolis, Ind., and getting ready to meet a young woman he’d been messaging that evening.
Pryor, 26, was a dedicated single dad to his 3-year-old daughter Honey, whom he was raising with an ex-girlfriend. But the little girl was at home with family while Pryor worked—and a night out awaited with a woman named Alexis Hawkins.
The two had connected on Instagram, and Pryor wanted to take Hawkins, 19, out to dinner at a restaurant. But she seemed to be in a hurry, so he drove them to a McDonald’s and then a liquor store instead. What Pryor didn’t know was that at the same time, Hawkins was allegedly texting her real boyfriend—and planning an ambush.
Just after 1 a.m. on Jan. 25, less than two hours after he and Hawkins met in person, Pryor was found in a pool of blood outside his car. He’d been shot multiple times and died later at a hospital. His phone was nearby, and, with the data found inside, investigators unraveled what they now call a sinister plot by an apparent serial scammer.
About two weeks after Pryor’s death, police tracked down Hawkins, who had been kicked out of her mother’s house two days after Pryor’s death. She denied any involvement in his shooting and said she had no memory of that night other than hearing gunshots and running for safety.
“[There’s] no weapon to say I did anything. My fingerprints aren’t on anything,” she said, according to a probable cause affidavit.
But when detectives mentioned Hawkins’s strange text to an unnamed person about needing money and making a “play real fast” that night, she went quiet and asked for a lawyer.
Both she and her boyfriend, 18-year-old Brian Winston Jr., have since been charged with murder and attempted robbery.
To Pryor’s family, it doesn’t make sense how a simple date turned deadly. “He had so many plans,” his mom, Tamekia Wiley, says. “He always wanted to better himself.”
With the accused killers behind bars, Pryor’s loved ones are left to mourn the hardworking, free-spirited young man they lost—while helping to raise the daughter who now lives with Ja’halha Feemster, Pryor’s ex.
“I know she misses him,” says Honey’s great-grandmother Patricia Bradshaw, “because she looks around and says ‘Da-Da,’ and I tear up because she was cheated out of her father.”
Adds Honey’s grandmother N’yalha Feemster: “She has a little shirt with his picture, and it shifts her whole mood when she’s wearing it.”
Amid their grief, Pryor’s friends remember him for his sense of humor and charm.
“He was one of those people you just couldn’t stay away from,” says Anijah Randle, who often joined Honey and her dad to watch movies. “Even if you bumped heads, he would make you just forget you’re mad.”
Pryor had a performative streak as well: He once did a Michael Jackson tribute at school and memorized choreography from Usher music videos. He dreamed of becoming a professional video gamer—he loved Call of Duty—but found other ways to earn money from a young age. When he was in the third grade, he began buying candies and erasers, selling them to classmates for a small profit.
Pryor’s most important role, however, was being a father. “That girl is a spitting image of him,” says Travis Wiley, Pryor’s stepdad.
Particular about his style, Pryor made sure to pass that on to his daughter, buying her several pairs of Air Jordan sneakers.
“It didn’t matter what we were talking about, he was going to bring up Honey in some way, shape or form,” adds pal Randle.
Both before and after his breakup with Honey’s mom, Pryor was close with her and her family, helping out with her younger siblings at bedtime. He thought of it as “practice for Honey,” says N’yalha, who believes Pryor’s alleged attacker missed an opportunity that night. “He would have been there for her, but she didn’t give him a chance.”
Hawkins and Winston remain in custody, and police say both have insisted they did nothing wrong. They have not entered pleas, and their attorneys did not comment to PEOPLE.
Regardless of the outcome in court, Pryor’s family and friends say their focus is on Honey.
“I pray for her to have a supernatural memory so that she can remember him,” says her grandmother. “Because we all deserved Jarrell. We absolutely did.”