Former Indy Parks Worker Details 2016 Violent Attack

INDIANAPOLIS — Following recent whistleblower accusations exposing a toxic work culture and safety lapses within Indy Parks, a former employee came forward to share an account of survival.

Former Employees Say Indy Parks Has a ‘Broken System’

Taylor, a former Assistant Park Manager who worked for Indy Parks from 2011 to 2017, spoke with WIBC’s Johnette Cruz and Jerry Lopez about her experience, nearly ten years after surviving a brutal armed abduction and stabbing while working alone at the Indianapolis World Sports Park.

In July 2016, Taylor was working in an isolated office located in a back corner of the Indianapolis World Sports Park building on the city’s Eastside. The facility lacked basic security features: there were no security cameras, no locks on interior staff doors, and only a simple chime that sounded when the main entrance opened. Prior to the attack, Taylor says she explicitly raised safety concerns to departmental leadership, asking for security cameras or a relocation of the staff office to the front of the building.

“I brought it up to park leadership that we don’t know who’s coming in and out of this building during the day,” Taylor recalled. “And essentially was told, ‘No, it’s not in the budget. Our park building was not a priority for any upgrades.'”

On a morning late in July 2016, a man entered the facility multiple times under the guise of asking for water and to use the phone—actions Taylor now recognizes as casing the building. On his third entry, he drew a knife, robbed her, and forced her into the parking lot. After ordering her into the trunk of her own car to drive her to an ATM, Taylor made a split-second decision that saved her life.

“While I’m laying in this dark trunk, all I can see is a glow-in-the-dark release latch,” Taylor shared. “I think like, ‘Okay, well, you can’t go to a second location, and it’s now or never… You gotta run for it.'”

Taylor popped the trunk and ran toward the building, but her attacker caught up to her. When he threatened sexual assault and she fought back, he stabbed her once in the arm and once in the abdomen. She fell to the ground, played dead until he drove away, and managed to drag herself back inside to call 911. The attack left her requiring emergency surgery to repair her internal organs and subsequent surgery for severed tendons in her arm.

Despite the violent nature of the attack, Taylor says city and park leadership quickly moved to keep the incident out of the public eye, as it occurred just days before the city’s inaugural “Pack the Parks” promotional event.

In the hospital, Taylor was classified as a “no contact” patient—meaning hospital staff denied her presence to anyone who called. While the Mayor and Parks Director initially offered support, Taylor says the tone shifted less than a week after her major abdominal surgery, when leadership called demanding she return to work immediately.

“I started having a panic attack, crying. I hadn’t even been released to return to work by the surgeon,” Taylor said.

She was forced to retain legal counsel to secure short-term disability. Meanwhile, the police investigation continued. Detectives told her they found no usable fingerprints, and Taylor was not brought in to meet with a sketch artist until October—three months after the attack. Her attacker was never caught.

Taylor eventually returned to Indy Parks at Broad Ripple Park, but the lack of organizational support and unresolved trauma eventually led her and her husband to leave Indianapolis altogether.

While Taylor credits front-line park staff as the “heart and soul” of Indy Parks, she hopes speaking out alongside other whistleblowers will force city leaders to prioritize employee safety over politics and budgets.

“The front-line staff are who make the parks truly special,” Taylor noted. “But that can be very hard to do when you don’t have leadership who think only in dollars and cents and not about the people they serve.”