As soon as his eyes open at 5 a.m., Daniel Mallory prays for wisdom and peace.
All sides of Indianapolis want to claim the 45-year-old as their own. But he is part of the city’s heartbeat, pumping wherever he is needed, pulling up in a pearl white Mazda to save lives.
“Now you’ve got somebody on your team,” Daniel explained with a grin. “You’ve got LeBron or Jordan.”
This is the work of a life coach in the Indy Peace Fellowship, a pillar of the city’s $150-million quest to stop the gun violence bleeding into its streets every day. Daniel is one of 14 life coaches working on the frontlines with those who are at the highest risk of becoming victims or perpetrators.
“I’ve been on both sides,” Daniel said. “I’ve been shot and I’ve been the shooter.”
The resume of his old life — selling drugs, simmering self-hatred, 15 ½ years in prison — was preparation enough. It allowed him to walk into hospital rooms to face young men with bullets lodged into their bodies and revenge on their minds. It allowed him to talk to the ones who did the shootings, to ask: “Don’t you have something more to live for?”
If there was redemption for him, there was redemption for anyone.
The shooting
In the streets, Ty’trell Averitte-Bass had a nickname: Fidget.
He was always on the move, looking for reasons to get out of the house. As a kid, that looked like buying candy from the corner store and doing karate. As a teenager, it was breaking into cars and selling drugs.
On his 8th birthday, his uncle threw him a party with Hummers and stacks of dollar bills.
At 14, he bought his first gun and accidentally shot himself in the leg.
It felt worse at 21, when someone else was behind the trigger.
(Left) Ty’trell Averitte-Bass points to a knee scar from surgery after being shot nine times in June. The incident required him to have multiple surgeries on his hand, stomach and leg. (Center) On Aug. 9, 2024, Ty’trell points to a scar caused by a bullet piercing his skin along the tattoo of his nickname, “Fidget.” (Right) Ty’trell wears a cross necklace that was given to him while he was hospitalized after being shot. He said a woman used the necklace to pray over him in the hospital, while she was visiting a relative.
That was three months ago. On June 3, he was shot nine times in front of a Riverside gas station. Bullets rained down, hitting his legs and stomach, blowing off his middle finger and shattering his femur.
Ty’trell felt himself dying in the ambulance. It was a long-drawn out breath, like going to sleep.
He heard the voices of his friends who died from gun violence.
But he wouldn’t join them. Doctors rushed him into surgery.
Becoming a peace fellow
A week later, Daniel walked into Ty’trell’s hospital room.
“Yo, are you in pain?” he asked.
Ty’trell nodded from his bed, lying in the dark. Life was bleak: he didn’t know who shot him and police hadn’t made any arrests.
In between six surgeries, doctors told him he would never walk again. Ty’trell cried and hoped they were lying.
Daniel took one look and knew Ty’trell could pull through. He just needed someone to guide him through recovery. Now, it was possible to start that process at the bedside; the Indy Peace Fellowship had recently partnered with IU Health Methodist Hospital to reach gunshot victims before they return home to a cycle of violence.
Daniel and other life coaches provide a year or more of mentoring, therapy and wraparound services. The city’s program with the Indy Public Safety Foundation targets the small number of people responsible for the majority of shootings in Indianapolis: men in their mid-to-late 20s who have prior arrests.
A homicide can cost the community up to $1 million, if you include money spent on investigations, court and incarceration. And for every shooting death, four more people are at risk for retaliation.
The city’s peace fellowship seems to be interrupting this pattern: Indianapolis is part of a national decrease in violent crime, with criminal homicides dropping by more than 30% since the program began in 2022.
It all starts by reaching one person in the streets.
Or at the hospital.
“I want to change,” Ty’trell said from his bed that day in June. “I want to be a better role model for my kids.”
“I got you,” Daniel replied. “Let’s use this situation as a catalyst.”
When he left the room, Ty’trell started moving his legs, putting one foot in front of the other, bending a knee when he could.
The shooting didn’t kill him, but it did end his old life. Now it was time to walk toward a new one.
Elder Circle
Ty’trell was one of the last to enter the room, balancing his weight on crutches.
He had defied doctors’ expectations. It was his fifth day on his feet and his first at Elder Circle, the monthly meeting between life coaches and their fellows.
At that July 24 meeting, they gathered at Ball State Indianapolis for Domino’s Pizza and group therapy.
Peace fellows sat together at a set of tables, facing a screen. Some wore neon construction vests from a day job, others had ankle monitors. One young man shuffled in with a neck brace, helped by his father into a seat.
“When you have done things for so long, it is hard to break those habits,” said Bernard Mickle, a program manager for Indy Peace leading the session. “But I am here to tell you that is a possibility. Let’s talk about the things that either put you in jail or land you in the ground.”
He rattled off a list of risk factors: criminal history, unemployment, lack of education, gun activity.
“Every single one is a product of your environment,” Mickle said. “You young men are born into this reality.”
Daniel and other life coaches know this better than anyone. They’ve walked the same paths and come out on the other side. They know the streets and why it feels necessary to resolve conflict with guns.
“I used to be scared of who I could be,” Daniel said, looking into the eyes of the men seated around him. “I was complacent with selling dope. I was complacent with holding a pistol. I was infatuated with the adrenaline. I was afraid to change the perception everybody had of me, to go into the phone booth and change from Clark Kent to Superman.”
He asked the fellows to think about their antidotes, the healthy habits that could replace each risk factor. Meditation and exercise, one said. Another raised his hand, suggesting self-improvement videos on YouTube.
Ty’trell didn’t say it out loud, but he thought about his: music. He plays rap in the shower, in the car, at the store. Favorite songs become motivation.
They talked further in small groups.
“What routines have you found helpful in creating stability and structure in your life?” Daniel asked.
“Staying out of the way,” one young man said. “I could be going out and doing something bad, but now I stay home and play a game.”
Ty’trell chimed in from his place in the circle: “You have to put in something new. There are things as a kid I should’ve did that I didn’t.”
“Damn, not me getting shot nine times,” he continued. “I ain’t even supposed to be walking. I’m not supposed to be here.”
But he was. He’d forced his legs to move with each small step.
“Leave it,” he told doctors who wanted to cut off his injured finger completely. It would be a challenge to learn how to use it again.
At the hospital, Daniel told Ty’trell he had a God-given mission after the shooting. Together, they made a list of goals: getting an apartment and signing up for disability; paying child support; being a good father, son and friend.
“I’m starting it all,” Ty’trell said. “All the things I didn’t do.”
‘Keep going’
In between doctor’s appointments and paperwork, they went grocery shopping.
Ty’trell’s cart was impeccably organized, just like his grandmother taught him: Cinnamon Toast Crunch in the center, with frozen peas and pizza crusts on the outside to keep the carton of eggs cold. Only the orange Hawaiian Punch belonged to him; everything else was first dibs for his little sister and brother.
Daniel pulled out a card to pay for the groceries with a city stipend. In his mind, redemption is tied to resources.
“It helps fellows get to the point where they don’t have to rob for food,” Daniel said. “They don’t have to sell drugs for it. They don’t have to do things that would compromise their goals to get what they need.”
It had been two months since the shooting. Ty’trell still thought about it every time he walked. A bullet hole was inches away from the one he’d accidentally given himself all those years ago.
He wanted justice for the person who had broken his body. He wanted to play basketball at the park again. He wanted to start his own business and have his four children nearby.
“Keep going,” Ty’trell told himself silently.
Sitting on a handicap shopping cart with a colostomy bag under his white T-shirt, he eyed an elderly man sweeping the floor in a nearby aisle.
“I will work here one day,” Ty’trell said. “It looks smooth, like you don’t need to worry about anything.”
No more running
The past can still haunt people trying to change their lives.
For Ty’trell, it was a decision he made a year before he met Daniel at the hospital. That summer, he led more than a dozen officers on a high-speed chase spanning two counties, ending with an arrest in Boone County. He started probation in February after pleading guilty to resisting law enforcement.
But in May, the month before someone shot him, Ty’trell missed two drug tests and failed one for marijuana. The probation violations continued to pile up after he was shot; while recovering from his injuries, Ty’trell missed another drug test and didn’t attend a mandatory class with Fathers & Families Center.
Daniel was ready to help with this roadblock. He rescheduled the class for August while Ty’trell explained the situation to his probation officer. That didn’t stop the arrest warrant.
It was a gut punch. Ty’trell was barely walking, shuffling around with bullet fragments in his legs. He needed pain medication and daily shots to prevent a blood clot. The colostomy bag still hung, a reminder of what he’d endured.
“To me, it’s an overreaction,” Daniel said. “They should have at least tried to understand where he was coming from.”
He acknowledged, though, that the prior drug violations didn’t help. But that was before Ty’trell joined the peace fellowship.
“I do believe if he had a life coach during those times he would not have missed those tests,” Daniel said. “I’m mentoring somebody who’s really teachable.”
Ty’trell was disappointed. This time, though, he wouldn’t run.
Starting over
Ty’trell laid on the concrete floor of his Boone County Jail cell.
It was late August. He’d turned himself in after learning of the judge’s arrest warrant for missing classes and drug tests.
He slept to forget, fidgeting from pain. Jail was not the place to heal from gunshot wounds or change a colostomy bag.
Yet he couldn’t leave. His next court date wasn’t scheduled until December and he couldn’t afford the $1,000 cash bond to return home in the meantime.
Back in Indianapolis, Daniel was frantic. He had to get Ty’trell out before he developed an infection. “It’s detrimental,” he said, “for them to snatch him out of his progress.”
Daniel and other Indy Peace staff sent letters to the judge in Boone County explaining the program and advocating for Ty’trell’s release. Then on Aug. 21, the jail commander saw Ty’trell’s condition and made some calls.
Two days later, Ty’trell was released in the morning without having to pay the bond. He went to a nearby gas station to wait for his life coach.
In the parking lot, Daniel gave him a handshake and a cigar. The two piled into his pearl white Mazda. There was no going home until business was settled at the Boone County Probation Office.
In the waiting room, Daniel sat with his hands on his knees as Ty’trell filled out the paperwork. He agreed to random drug tests each month.
Daniel knew the significance of moments like this: one path leads back to the complacency of a prior life; the other choice, the one they’d started together in the hospital, strikes a step toward redemption.
But no matter what the judges and probation officers do, Daniel keeps urging Ty’trell to trust him and the journey.
“Sometimes you have to go through it to get over it,” Daniel said.
He had other calls to answer on his phone, more gunshot victims and young people needing his help. But in that probation office, Daniel’s attention stayed on a peace fellow called Fidget.
“It’s like boot camp,” Ty’trell said, holding his pen. “I got to start over.”
Mirror Indy reporter Mary Claire Molloy covers health. Reach her at 317-721-7648 or email maryclaire.molloy@mirrorindy.org. Follow her on X @mcmolloy7.
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