Police have arrested five people in connection with the shooting of an Indiana judge and his wife at their home on Sunday, including one man who was due in the judge’s courtroom days after the attack.
Lafayette police said in a statement Thursday that the five were arrested following an extensive investigation into the shooting of Judge Steven Meyer and his wife, Kimberly.
Both victims were in a stable condition following the shooting, which happened around 2:17 p.m. on Jan. 18. The judge was injured on his arm, his wife on her hip.
Thomas Moss, 43, from Tippecanoe County, Indiana; Blake Smith, 32, from Dayton, Indiana; and Raylen Ferguson, 38, from Lexington, Kentucky, were all arrested on charges of attempted murder — a level one felony in Indiana — and conspiracy to commit murder, among other charges.
Those three suspects were arrested on additional charges of gang enhancement and firearm enhancement, which prosecutors can use to call for a longer prison sentence in the event of a conviction. Moss and Smith, who police initially said were residents of Lafayette before providing updated information, were listed as “habitual offenders.”
Police also arrested Amanda Milsap, 45, from Lafayette, on charges of bribery and obstruction of justice, and Zenada Greer, 61, from Lexington, Kentucky, on charges of assisting a criminal and obstruction of justice. The relationship among the suspects was not immediately clear.
While police did not share a motive behind the attack, one of the suspects charged with attempted murder had been set to go before the judge in a separate trial that was scheduled to start two days after the shooting.
Court filings obtained by NBC News show that Moss was charged in 2024 with a range of felonies, including domestic battery and unlawful possession of a firearm by a serious violent felon. He had also been charged with shooting a firearm into a building. His jury trial for that case, which had been postponed several times, was supposed to start on Jan. 20.
A receptionist who answered the phone for Benjamin Jaffe, an Indianapolis attorney listed for Moss, said Jaffe’s office had no comment on the case.
Moss’s legal troubles date back more than 20 years. Court records show he received his felon status after he was convicted following a 2004 offense of battery that resulted in serious bodily injury and a conviction for criminal recklessness while armed with a deadly weapon.
Years later, in an unrelated case, Moss threatened an ex- girlfriend who he had pressured to allow him to live with, the court records say. An affidavit of probable cause alleges Moss used handguns and a broomstick to threaten the woman on numerous instances between 2022 and 2024, sometimes in front of their child.
The woman said “she would submit to his demands as he has made multiple threats to her, including threats to kill her, shoot her, and break her jaw,” according to the affidavit. It also said that law enforcement had noted several apparent bullet holes in a closet in their residence.
The judge’s shooting comes amid an increase in threats against politicians, judicial figures and other public officials. In Indiana, a December 2023 poll of 214 judges found that 159 said they had been the target of a threat.
It was not immediately clear whether the other suspects in the Steven Meyer’s shooting had legal representation.
Lafayette police said the arrests were made in collaboration between a long list of agencies across multiple states, including police in Lexington and Allentown, Pennsylvania, the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Steven Meyer said in a statement issued by the Indiana Judicial Branch on Tuesday that he was grateful for the “support from friends, the community, court colleagues, and law enforcement” and the medical team that treated him and his wife.
“I want the community to know that I have strong faith in our judicial system. This horrific violence will not shake my belief in the importance of peacefully resolving disputes. I remain confident we have the best judicial system in the world, and I am proud to be a part of it,” he said.
Loretta H. Rush, the chief justice of Indiana, said in a statement on Sunday that she worried “about the safety of all our judges.”
“As you work to peacefully resolve more than 1 million cases a year, you must not only feel safe, you must also be safe. Any violence against a judge or a judge’s family is completely unacceptable. As public servants, you are dedicated to the rule of law,” she said.
Steven Meyer, who was elected to the state bench in 2014, had recently said he would not seek re-election in November and planned to retire. He practiced law in the Lafayette area for 30 years and is a former president of Lafayette City Council.
Lafayette is about an hour outside Indianapolis.
CORRECTION (Jan. 23, 2026, 11:00 a.m. ET): A previous version of this article misstated the name of the body that issued a statement from Steven Meyer. It is the Indiana Judicial Branch, not the Indiana Judicial Bench. The story has also been updated to reflect that the charges of attempted murder are a level-one felony, rather than a charge in the first degree.