Scholarship made in honor of IU football player fatally shot during riots

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Indiana University has started a football scholarship and an annual team award in honor of Chris Beaty, a former IU football player who was shot and killed during downtown riots and protests at the end of May.

The Chris Beaty Indiana Football Scholarship was made possible by a $100,000 gift from his mother, Debra Cooper, of Indianapolis, Indiana University Athletics announced Thursday. The scholarship will be awarded each year to a football student-athlete from Indiana, with a preference given to students who begin their careers as walk-ons, as Beaty did when he joined the Hoosiers as a walk-on in 2000.

The team has also renamed the team’s annual Walk-On Award, now called the Chris Beaty Outstanding Walk-On award. The first two recipients of that award, named last week, were Davion Ervin-Poindexter and Christian Harris, the athletics department announced.

“Chris Beaty loved Indiana, loved Indiana Football, and loved people. He was a very caring, selfless, and passionate person. I have said it before and I will say it again, Chris lived out LEO. His support was unwavering. Chris will always be a special person to our program and to the University,” IU head football coach Tom Allen said.

Beaty was a graduate of Cathedral High School, which earlier this year established the Chris Beaty ’00 Endowed Memorial Tuition Fund, backed by a $100,000 donation. Some of the funds for the scholarships came after a GoFundMe page was started to raise scholarship funds in Beaty’s honor and garnered support from more than 1,700 people, the athletics department said.

Police found Beaty shot near the intersection of Talbott and Vermont streets on the night of May 30, the second of two nights of rioting in Indianapolis. Beaty was shot trying to protect two women from being robbed, friends of Beaty told News 8.

Documents released by the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office in December detail a crime spree committed by a group that night, including the robbery of a woman in a parking garage on East Vermont Street. One of those men, Marcus Anderson, was charged with two counts of murder faces (one for Beaty’s murder, another for murdering Beaty while committing a robbery), six counts of armed robbery and one count of pointing a firearm.

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