Monon Trail Attacker Pleads To Robbery And Battery

Remember the unprovoked attack on Darrell Arthur last year while he was riding his bicycle on the Monon Trail? That would be the one where four of Indy's finest youth clubbed him in the head with a two-by-four and dumped him unconscious in a pile of rubble and covered his body with baskets, buckets and an oil-stained cloth in hopes he wouldn't be discovered. The prosecutor's office has accepted a plea agreement for robbery and aggravated battery according to the Star's Jon Murray for a 17-year-old charged in the attack. The plea agreement is supposed to result in a sentence of 20-30 years. Translated, that means he'll be back on the street in about 10 years before he reaches his 30th birthday.

At the time of the arrests, the arresting officer in the case had this to say about the attack:

"After he was struck across the head with a two by four he fell to the ground at which time he was punched and kicked numerous times," said Detective James Quigley of the Indianapolis Police Department. "Mr. Arthur could have very easily been killed that night, he could have been one kick from being killed that night."Police arrested three of the four teens. A 14-year-old, a 15-year-old, and 16-year-old Montaz Lewis. Lewis is the only one facing adult felony charges for robbery and battery. The other two will face charges in juvenile court."The 16-year-old unfortunately almost seemed proud of his act," said Detective Quigley. "In all my years doing this job this is probably one of the most heinous crimes I have seen."

Despite the brutal attack on him, which netted his robbers all of $10, Arthur was very forgiving of his attackers. "But somehow, Mr. Arthur says he's already forgiven the teens." "I mean what's going on in their lives, you know, that at 14, 15, 16 years of age they are making a decision like this that is going to affect them for the rest of their life," Arthur said. Lucky for them, I guess the prosecutor's office was just as forgiving in agreeing to today's plea agreement.

Speaking of crimes, I hope the Star plans to report on the brutal hate crime killing April 12 of Aaron Hall, a 35-year-old Crothersville man two young men allegedly beat to death because they believed he was gay. Sadly, Star editorial writer RiShawn Biddle uses Hall's horrific killing to editorialize against hate crime laws. I'm not joking. Biddle writes:

There's no way that the passage of the proposed hate crimes law contained in House Bill 1459 have actually protected Aaron Hall from being allegedly murdered last week -- and the murkiness of the case shows that it may not even have been considered a hate crime. But would its passage prevent future crimes? Certainly not. More importantly, murder, assault and battery are hate crimes; a hate crimes statute merely serves as useless sentencing enhancement, especially when one realizes that prosecutors are creative enough to add additional charges to an initial crime when evidence of that can be found. And before anyone argues that the state enhances sentences in cases of cop killings and child murders, let me say that I'm against those enhancements as well. The law, as a principle, should be uniform and equally applied to all, no matter how heinous an incident.

The "murkiness of the case"? According to police, the men charged with the crime used the excuse of the man being gay and suggesting the performance of a sexual act as proking their beating of him, ending in his death. The men used a camera phone to take pictures of themselves with their arms around Hall showing his badly beaten face, as if he were a game trophy, and then passed it along to one of their friends in a text message. That's not what I call murky. The Star has yet to cover Hall's hate crime killing.