>Like a bat out of Hell.
Police have arrested the alleged killer, 37-year-old Aaron Howard who has been charged with murder in the death of 67-year-old John Miller.
It began, police say, as a dispute among neighbors in Abilene, Tex. Two families argued about where to dump trash in an adjacent alleyway. Insults escalated to threats, culminating in a father who was allegedly beaten to death with a baseball bat in front of his son by a man who lived next door in an encounter captured on camera.
The Sept. 1 standoff between the neighbors, which ended in the fatal bashing, was the final argument in a days-long feud over trash disposal, said Abilene Police Chief Stan Standridge, speaking at a news conference about an hour after the incident.
“It’s been going on for a couple days, and it culminated in today’s violence,” Standridge said.
Howard was killed in front of his son, 31-year-old Michael Miller, who could do little more then watch as his father was bludgeoned to death. The encounter was captured on the cellphone of Howard's wife. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram published the footage on Thursday, which gives a rare glimpse into a deadly dispute and sheds new light on a weeks-old killing.
Reached by phone, the Howard's declined to discuss the incident.
The video, at a little over two and a half minutes unedited, begins with the Millers, both unarmed, staring Howard down, a flipped twin mattress between them. That mattress, Michael told the Star-Telegram, was the conflict’s catalyst.
Howard had thrown the mattress in the dumpster a couple days earlier, he said. But on Sept. 1, they saw the mattress back on their property. So Howard moved it back to the dumpster. Michael said Howard’s nieces, nephews and brothers were with them, too. He told the paper that he saw his father, John Miller, walk to the dumpster, pull the mattress out and toss it back on Howard’s property.
