Joaquin Harmon-Segura, Appellant-Defendant v. State of Indiana, Appellee-Plaintiff (2026)

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Case Summary

[1] Joaquin Harmon-Segura appeals his conviction, following a bench trial, for murder, a felony. Harmon-Segura raises one issue for our review, namely, whether the State presented sufficient evidence to support his conviction. We affirm.

Facts and Procedural History

[2] G.S. was dating Harmon-Segura, and Savannah Allen was dating Harmon-Segura's friend, Tyler Gibson. In the early morning hours of March 28, 2024, the four individuals were at Gibson's grandmother's house drinking. At some point, Harmon-Segura and Gibson left to go to a gas station, and G.S. and Allen remained behind. While Harmon-Segura and Gibson were gone, G.S. disclosed that she had been raped in 2020 by a man nicknamed “Gus.” Tr. at 13.

[3] While they were talking, Allen received a FaceTime call, and she told G.S. that she thought it was from Gus. That “upset” G.S. and “stressed [her] out.” Id. G.S. “started crying.” Id. at 32. Allen answered the call, and there were three people on the other end wearing face masks. During the phone call, Harmon-Segura and Gibson returned, and G.S. was “still crying.” Id. at 33. Harmon-Segura got “mad” because G.S. “was crying and he had heard that she got raped,” so he “grabbed the phone” and said, “we're about to slide on your homeboy's house,” which means “to shoot somebody's house up.” Id. at 33, 44.

[4] After the phone call, Harmon-Segura said that they “were going to go to Gus's house.” Id. at 15. G.S. provided an address at Harmon-Segura's request. The four then got into Allen's car, and G.S. saw Harmon-Segura and Gibson with firearms. As they approached the house, G.S. saw a car that she believed belonged to Gus, so she said that she thought “that's the house.” Id. at 16. Allen slowed down, and Harmon-Segura and Gibson “started shooting out [of] the windows[,]” which had been rolled down. Id. Harmon-Segura fired the first shot. At some point, Harmon-Segura and Gibson exited the car and continued shooting toward the house.

[5] Inside the house, after the first few shots, Rebecca Roush woke up and called for her son, Adam Hart. Roush and Hart had just moved into the house the prior February, along with Hart's fiancée and her five-year-old son. Roush was standing by the staircase near the front door, and Hart came “running up[.]” Id. at 52. Roush then heard a “barrage” of sounds and turned to look. Id. When she turned back around, she saw Hart “down.” Id. Roush called 9-1-1, and officers responded to the dispatch shortly after 1:00 a.m. Hart died as a result of a gunshot wound to his head.

[6] Harmon-Segura and Gibson got back in the car, and the four returned to Gibson's grandmother's house. Harmon-Segura said: “I think I got, I seen somebody drop down in the window.” Id. at 38. By the time they left, the “front of the house had over 30 bullets holes in it[.]” Id. at 7. When they got back to the house, Harmon-Segura had “a lot of energy” and was “hyper.” Id. at 19. He said “that he th[ought] he got him.” Id. Harmon-Segura checked the “Citizens” application on his phone and saw that there had been a report of a “person unresponsive” at the house they had shot. Id. at 39. Harmon-Segura and Gibson “shook up,” meaning they “[d]apped each other up[.]” Id.¹ Harmon-Segura “kept saying how he was always going to defend G.S.” Id. And Gibson said: “oh yeah, brother. We did that.” Id.

[7] The State charged Harmon-Segura with murder, a felony. The trial court held a bench trial on January 28, 2026. At the conclusion of the trial, the court found Harmon-Segura guilty as charged. Following a sentencing hearing, the court sentenced Harmon-Segura to forty-six years in the Department of Correction. This appeal ensued.

Discussion and Decision

[8] Harmon-Segura contends that the State failed to present sufficient evidence to support his conviction. Our standard of review on a claim of insufficient evidence is well settled:

For a sufficiency of the evidence claim, we look only at the probative evidence and reasonable inferences supporting the [judgment]. Drane v. State, 867 N.E.2d 144, 146 (Ind. 2007). We do not assess the credibility of witnesses or reweigh the evidence. Id. We will affirm the conviction unless no reasonable fact-finder could find the elements of the crime proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Id.

Love v. State, 73 N.E.3d 693, 696 (Ind. 2017).

[9] To prove that Harmon-Segura committed murder as charged, the State was required to demonstrate that he had knowingly killed another person. See Ind. Code § 35-42-1-1(1); see also Appellant's App. Vol. 2 at 25. On appeal, Harmon-Segura does not dispute that he killed Hart. However, he contends that the State failed to present any evidence that he did so knowingly.

[10] A person engages in conduct knowingly if, when he engages in the conduct, “he is aware of a high probability that he is doing so.” I.C. § 35-41-2-2(b). “Because knowledge is a mental state of the actor, it may be proved by circumstantial evidence and inferred from the circumstances and facts of each case.” Smith v. State, 963 N.E.2d 1110, 1113 (Ind. 2012). “A knowing killing may be inferred from the use of a deadly weapon in a manner likely to cause death.” Dunlap v. State, 761 N.E.2d 837, 839 (Ind. 2002).

[11] Harmon-Segura acknowledges that he acted recklessly when he fired the gun at the house. But he asserts that “there were no people visible” and that there was “no evidence” that he knew “whether or not there was even anyone inside the house.” Appellant's Br. at 10. And he maintains that “there was no evidence whatsoever that [he] planned or intended to hurt, let alone kill, anyone, or that he was aware of a high probability that his actions would result in the death of a person.” Id. at 11. We cannot agree.

[12] Here, the evidence most favorable to the judgment demonstrates that Harmon-Segura returned from the gas station to find his girlfriend, G.S., crying because she believed that Allen had received a FaceTime call from Gus, who had previously raped her. When Harmon-Segura learned that Gus had raped G.S., he got on the phone and said that they were going to “slide on your homeboy's house,” which means to “shoot ․ up” the house. Tr. at 33, 44. Harmon-Segura then got an address from G.S. and told Gibson, Allen, and G.S. that they “were going to go to Gus's house.” Id. at 15. Once they arrived at the house in the early morning hours, Harmon-Segura and Gibson fired more than thirty shots into the house, which was occupied by four people, and that approximately eighteen of the shots were concentrated around an upstairs window. The evidence further shows that there were two cars “in the driveway that night” and that the shooting occurred in the early morning hours. Id. at 50.

[13] After they returned to the car, Harmon-Segura said that he thought he saw “somebody drop down in the window.” Id. at 38. When they got back to Gibson's grandmother's house, Harmon-Segura had “a lot of energy” and said that he “th[ought] he got him.” Id. at 19. Then, after the group learned from the Citizens application that a person had been found unresponsive at the house they had shot, Harmon-Segura and Gibson celebrated by “[d]app[ing] each other up,” and Gibson said: “oh yeah, brother. We did that.” Id. at 39.

[14] Stated differently, the evidence shows that Harmon-Segura fired numerous shots into the front of a home in the early morning hours, that there were two cars in the driveway of the home, and that he celebrated when he learned that a person had been found unresponsive, which suggests that he had expected a person to be present in the house that he said he was going to shoot up. Given that the shooting occurred at night, when occupancy of a house is most likely; that there were cars in the driveway; and that Harmon-Segura celebrated his success at having shot someone, a reasonable fact-finder could infer that Harmon-Segura had acted knowingly when he shot at the house. As such, the State presented sufficient evidence to show that Harmon-Segura had knowingly killed Hart.²

[15] Affirmed.

FOOTNOTES

1.   “Dap” is “slapping palms as a form of greeting a friend and then holding their hand as you pull your fingers back until it makes a snapping sound.” See Urban Dictionary, https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=dap [https://perma.cc/3NQE-36LN]

2.   Harmon-Segura does not make any argument that he lacked the intent to kill Hart because he did not know that Gus no longer lived in the house. In any event, under the doctrine of transferred intent, “a defendant's intent to kill one person is transferred when, by mistake or inadvertence, the defendant kills a third person; the defendant may be found guilty of the murder of the person who was killed, even though the defendant intended to kill another.” Blanche v. State, 690 N.E.2d 709, 712 (Ind. 1998). Thus, Harmon-Segura's intent to kill Gus transferred to Hart.

Bailey, Judge.

Brown, J., and Weissmann, J., concur.