INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — An death investigation from October has been ruled a homicide, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said.

IMPD was called just to a death investigation to a home on Chateugay Drive, near I-69 and County Line Road, Oct. 19, 2024 around 8 p.m.

At the home, officers found Alisa Raufeisen, 24, dead at the scene from injuries consistent with trauma.

Dec. 12, the Marion County Coroner’s Office ruled Raufeisen’s death to be a homicide.

IMPD is continuing to investigate her death.

Editor’s note: IndyStar formed a 17-member Reader Advisory Panel this year, inviting community members for four monthly discussions on how the newsroom can better deliver its mission of service to Indianapolis. We invited members to write about the experience afterward.

As a student studying journalism here in Indianapolis, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in the IndyStar reader advisory panel over the summer months.

Not only is it refreshing to see such an influential force in local media put real time and effort into connecting with its readers, but it was a learning experience on both ends of the conversation about the state of journalism in our city.

Something I’ve learned while studying journalism these past few years is that Indiana is considered a “news desert.” According to the University of North Carolina database, Indiana has seen a decrease of more than 40% in news circulation since 2004. This generally means that a lot of citizens are consistently relying on the same few media outlets to bring them news they find important and meaningful.

Each meeting, we’d bring issue’s we’d experienced as readers with the IndyStar to the table. These concerns were heard by editor Eric Larsen alongside an amazing team of IndyStar staff members who were willing to collaborate with us as we pitched out ideas for improvements and discussed why these ideas were important to us.

Everyone had different ideas on what could be improved, and the staff were respectful and understanding when explaining why things are the way they are. Whether a lack of resources or reader interest is holding IndyStar back from reporting in different areas, they would let us know, and we’d pitch ideas to help cover wider groups of people without straining their resources.

The consensus on what changes we want to see at IndyStar? Well, it was all pretty individual. Every panel member had ideas for what they want to see more or less of, or even ideas on how the IndyStar app could be made more worthwhile to its users.

Overall, we could all agree on the fact that us as readers want to know our local reporters better. We want to see them in the community and engage with them they way we were able to engage with IndyStar members in these meetings.

It’s safe to say, in my opinion, that IndyStar is already taking steps in the right direction in engaging its readers, considering they invited us back month after month, even if we criticized their work right to their faces.

In Indiana especially, it’s important that we understand that we can not expect good journalism if we do not continue to encourage good journalism.

I’m appreciative that IndyStar provided this opportunity to seek improvement from those who it effects the most, and I’m excited to see some worthy improvements be implemented to one of our news outlets here in Indianapolis.

Kylee Leahy is a senior majoring in journalism at Indiana University Indianapolis.

INDIANAPOLIS — An 82-year-old woman died in a house fire on the southeast side of Indianapolis on Saturday.

According to the Indianapolis Fire Department, firefighters were dispatched to 5240 Chisolm Trail around 4:40 p.m. after a neighbor called 911.

When the first unit arrived, they learned someone was trapped inside the home.

Firefighters located an 82-year-old woman. She was pronounced deceased on the scene. Family members told IFD that the woman lived alone but was checked on daily by family. She lived in the home for over 30 years.

The department said there were working smoke alarms in the home. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.