Tuition Fund Honors Slain Indianapolis Businessman, Former IU Football Player

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indianapolis high school is naming a new scholarship fund in honor of alum Chris Beaty, a former Indiana University football player and businessman who was slain in downtown Indianapolis last May during unrest following the death of George Floyd.

Cathedral High School announced last week that $100,000 donated to the school from a GoFundMe campaign will go toward the new Chris Beaty ’00 Endowed Memorial Tuition Fund.

One student from the Catholic high school will be chosen from a pool of freshmen applicants to receive the tuition assistance grant every four years.

“Chris was an amazing young man who always made things happen, no matter the odds,” Beaty’s mother, Debra Beaty-Cooper, said in a statement. “He would be so happy to know this tuition grant is making a Cathedral education possible for a student who may think attending Cathedral is impossible.”

Beaty, 38, graduated from Cathedral High School in 2000 after playing on three of its state championship-winning football teams. He was a defensive lineman at Indiana University from 2000 to 2004, and later became an Indianapolis business owner.

Beaty was fatally shot May 30 as he walked through an alley near his apartment building during violence that followed protests over Floyd’s death in Minneapolis and police treatment of Black people.

A 23-year-old man has been charged for his suspected role in Beaty's death.