Toward the end of April, organizers with PSL Indianapolis (Party for Socialism and Liberation) and other member groups of the Indianapolis Liberation Center were preparing to support military veteran Jada Trainor against three charges Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears’ office filed against her. This wasn’t the first time we started preparing for court support and it wouldn’t be the last. On May 5, Judge Angela Dow Davis granted the State of Indiana another continuance in Marion Superior Court 27.
The jury trial is scheduled for July 23, 2025, over a year after three cops attacked Trainor at Eskenazi Hospital and charged her with two felonies and one misdemeanor. Trainor faces one count of “Disarming a Law Enforcement Officer” by “knowingly or intentionally tak[ing] or attempt[ing] to take a firearm,” one count of “Battery Against a Public Safety Official,” and one count of “Resisting Law Enforcement.” Given the seriousness of these charges, what is taking Mears so long to go to trial?
In an interview with Jada Trainor and her husband, Jonathan, I quickly realized the answer: the state has no case. It’s likely they are trying to drag the case out in an effort to wear her and her family down. The opposite is happening, however. Seated around a table at the Indianapolis Liberation Center a few days after May 14, Jada and Jonathan were as steadfast as ever. While their trauma hasn’t faded, neither has their conviction for standing up against police terror and intimidation.
An almost deadly trip to the hospital
“It all happened on July 13,” Jada told me. That’s the day she and her husband walked into Eskenazi Hospital because Jada’s blood pressure was so high they were concerned about an impending stroke. The staff wasn’t as concerned, and hours later Jada was still waiting. By this time, she was alone. After waiting two to three hours, Jonathan returned home to take care of their newest son, one of their five children. The crowd was thinning out, so Jada approached the nurses who dismissed her. “Oh, you know, we called but you didn’t answer so you’re not on our list anymore,” a nurse told her. Yet she hadn’t left the waiting room at all, even to use the bathroom. The nurses weren’t disturbed by her health condition. As Jada said, “me being upset seemed to be the most upsetting thing to them.”
Jada called her husband. “I got this bad feeling,” she said. “When you have to advocate for yourself, especially as a Black person in a hospital, you want to have people there to back you up and be with you.” With Jonathan, a white man, listening, the nurses started to check her in. As she was moving back to the rooms, she asked for a patient advocate. They refused. “What else do you need?” one said. That’s when a nurse told Jada she was being rude. The next thing she knew, she was being told to leave.
“You need to leave. You need to go.”
“What did I do?”
“You’re being rude.”
Jada tried reasoning with them. “Okay,” she proposed,” if I leave can I just stand out there and have a patient advocate come meet me?” That’s when they escalated the situation.
“You know what? Never mind, we’re going to call security.”
Eskenazi security terrorized Jada for self-advocacy
Almost immediately, three uniformed cops descended on her: Anthony Sisco, Matthew Mottram, and Leighton Schoolcraft. “These guys were big,” Jada said. Mottram, she said, seemed “seven feet tall.” Sisco was a little shorter but seemed just as strong. Mottram, inches from her face, says, “Ma’am, you need to go.” Just as Jada started to reply, “I will absolutely leave, I was just asking for an advocate,” Mottram grabbed her under the arm so hard it left a bruise.
Jonathan was still on the phone and heard her scream “Ow! Don’t touch me!” Having done nothing wrong, Jada nonetheless followed their order to leave, or at least she tried to. As she started walking away, the officers jumped on her and took her to the ground, breaking her eyeglasses after knocking them off her face.
Sisco placed his knee on her back and repeatedly struck her with his elbow. He pinned her right arm behind her back and threatened to taser her. She was terrified, having entered Eskenazi seeking treatment for high blood pressure and with a history of heart issues. “Why are you hitting me?” she asked. That’s when one officer, she thinks it was Sisco, stated loudly but without any emotion behind it, “she’s reaching for my firearm!” “I’m not reaching for it” Jada yelled.
Later, the cops would contradict that statement. The affidavit says that she tugged on his gun three times. Both contradicting scenarios are equally impossible.
Jada was without glasses, face-down on the floor, had one arm pinned behind her back, and three officers on top of her. They’ve tried acting out the police’s script several times and have failed at each attempt.
By this time, Jonathan was back at the hospital but they refused to let him see his wife. “You can see her at the Community Justice Center or whatever during visitation hours,” Mottram said. Mottram didn’t say anything after Jonathan asked if Jada was okay.
An agonizing 26 hours in jail
Instead of receiving any treatment, Jada was transported to the “Justice” Campus. She was never formally booked. During the approximately 26 hours they held her, they never took a statement from her and denied her the right to a phone call. Jada was in an all-white room that remained lit where, deprived of access to her newborn, she was forced to nurse herself under the watchful eye of a surveillance camera.
Meanwhile, Jonathan and Jada’s mother took turns calling every hour or two, asking for a Chaplain to check on her. They wanted a Chaplain because they didn’t trust the officers or guards. “I asked if I should bring her asthma medicine” because “she takes a nebulizer every couple of hours,” but Jonathan was told she was receiving all prescribed medications.
That was far from true. Jada received was a single dose of blood pressure medication only because she had intense pain in her arm and the guards were afraid she might have a heart attack.
Not backing down
When Jada first contacted Destiny Glover, the General Coordinator at the Indianapolis Liberation Center (ILC), she and another organizer filed an Access to Public Records Act request for bodycam and surveillance video footage of the incident.
Organizer Noah Leininger, who has almost a decade of experience filing such requests, received a response on August 19, 2024, stating there were “no responsive records,” meaning Eskenazi claimed they had no footage of the incident.
Miraculously, Jada’s lawyer, Michael Lee Nichols, recently received 16 hours of footage to sift through months after the ILC requested video on Jada’s behalf. There are no time stamps or other indicators included in that film dump, however.
Unfortunately, the local press has not pursued or mentioned this story of our neighbor, a Black woman, a veteran, mother, daughter, wife, and gentle and kind human. On the upshot, we can now add fearless advocate for her community and for justice to her list of attributes.
PSL Indianapolis and other ILC groups, volunteers, and supporters have and will remain side-by-side until the truth comes to light and Jada and the system that put her and her loved ones through this receive justice.
Featured photo: Jada Trainor (left) and her husband, Jonathan, at the Indianapolis Liberation Center. Credit: Indianapolis Liberation Center