INDIANAPOLIS — One year later, Debra Cooper is reflecting on the night she found out her beloved son had been killed.
“When I looked out and saw Marion County Morgue on the car, my heart just dropped,” said Cooper about her son Chris Beaty. “I thought oh Lord have mercy, I don’t know I’m going to get through this.”
38-year-old Chris Beaty was outside his apartment building near Talbot and Vermont St. when witnesses says he walked into a robbery.
“Naturally Chris jumped in to help the girls and the girls got away, but unfortunately he didn’t,” said Cooper. “They shot him five times and left him laying there.”
A 23-year-old man has since been charged with his murder.
“That’s the part that helps you get through it,” she said. “That he was doing what he loved to do the most, helping people.”
Well known in the Indianapolis community, Beaty was a business owner, former IU football player and Cathedral High School graduate. Now, the two schools have created scholarships in his name. A new endowed football scholarship at IU and a tuition assistance grant to one incoming freshman every four years at Cathedral High School.
“Chris would’ve loved that because he was always trying to help get kids that were about to get kicked out of school some help,” Cooper said. “He was really good at that.”
Cooper says, by helping other kids, it will keep her son’s legacy alive.
“There are a lot of people like Chris in this world, but not enough.”
On Sunday May 30, they will be holding a balloon release at Talbot and Vermont St. where Beaty was killed. It will happen at 6 p.m. if anyone would like to join.
