It turns out that Ashton Harting, a 13-year-old Indianapolis boy who was shot dead in the wee hours of the morning of Jan. 19, may have been killed for knocking over trash cans, the New York Daily News reports.
Police arrested and charged Dino Thompson, 17, with Ashton’s murder Monday.
At first, a witness at the scene, who had been walking with Ashton and other friends, said that someone in the group pulled out a gun and fired at a moving car, the Daily News reports. Then someone in the car fired back, hitting Ashton in the back, killing him.
But that witness has since recanted his story and now says that Ashton and everyone else in the group were knocking over trash cans for fun, engaging in “horseplay,” when Ashton was shot in the back.
Police questioned people who lived nearby, and Thompson’s girlfriend confessed that when they heard trash cans being knocked over, Thompson took out a handgun and went outside, and then she heard three or four gunshots, the Daily News reports.
Thompson’s girlfriend told police that Thompson told her to lie when police questioned her initially, the Daily News reports. She first said that she and Thompson heard the trash cans being knocked over, Thompson went out and came back inside, and then they heard the gunshots. Thompson and Ashton did not know each other.
Ashton’s mother told the Indianapolis Star that she thinks “it’s ridiculous” that someone killed her son over something as “petty” as knocking over trash cans, the Daily News reported. “I’ve had kids knock over my trash cans, and I’ve had kids break my windows. But there’s no way in hell I’d pull a gun out on anybody,” Misty Harting said.
Read more at the New York Daily News.