The sky was cloudy with streaks of sunlight peeking through, the temperature was a balmy 72 degrees when a Friday
afternoon in Indianapolis spiraled like a tornado from partly sunny to gray to black. It was a darkness that had
nothing to do with the weather.
It was September 11, 1992, and the clock was approaching 4 p.m. It was just before the weekend, when offices started
closing a little earlier and the city began to unwind. And that’s when Indianapolis started bleeding blue. On that
particular Sunday, the Indianapolis Colts hosted the Houston Oilers.
Indianapolis was a newcomer to the NFL, having lured the Baltimore Colts to the city with a gleaming professional
sports palace known as the Hoosier Dome only eight years before.
Inside their palace that Sunday, the Colts lost 20-10 to the Oilers. No one would have expected anything else, not
after what had happened that Friday in their city before the game.
Four men, Michael A. Carroll, Frank McKinney Jr., Robert V. Welch and John Weliever were on a plane just south of
the city. They were taking off for a business trip to AmeriFlora 92, an international exhibition, to learn how to
promote a park on the White River just west of downtown.