A 35-year-old man who died in Indiana from being beaten for hours is Aaron C. Hall. He was called Shorty and the beating he died of was allegedly done by two teenage males. They beat him to death they claimed because Shorty made a homosexual advance towards one of the boys.
He was born on April 28, 1971 in Seymour Indiana. He lived in Crothersville, Indiana where he had one daughter and died on April 12, 2007. Interviews from witnesses and police accounts state that he was last seen on April 12, 2007 where the teenagers King and Gray and 21-year-old Hendricks picked the victim up to go drinking at Gray’s residence. Gray said that the fight started when Hall grabbed King in the ground. King and Gray then allegedly beat Hall. It was Hendricks who called the police by sending a photo of the teenagers and the beaten Hall from his cellphone to policeman John Hodge.
Hendricks said that the beating occurred for several hours and ended when the teenagers drove Hall to a ditch and left him there. It was alledged that the teenagers and Hendricks returned to the ditch on a later date to retrieve a new camouflage coat Hall had been wearing and took Hall’s dead, naked and beaten body back to Gray’s garage. This is where police discovered the body which was wrapped in a tarp.
Gray and King were charged of murder and voluntary manslaughter in Jackson County Jail while Hendricks was charged with assisting a criminal act. On December 17, 2007, King entered into a plea agreement where the murder charge was dropped but he was sentenced for 30 years for class A voluntary manslaughter. While Indiana is one of the only three states in the US without a hate crimes legislation, Shorty Hall is now referred to as the Matthew Shepard of Indiana.
