The day after learning his 18-year-old son had been killed by Cincinnati police, Rodney Hinton Jr. sat down with his family to watch the body cam footage of the teenager’s final moments. Too distraught to watch it in full, Hinton left the police station before the video ended.
A few hours later, according to prosecutors, he drove his car at high speed towards officer Larry Henderson, who was directing college graduation traffic at an intersection, killing him. Henderson, a 57-year-old father of five, had retired last December after over three decades as a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Deputy, but returned occasionally for special duty. He didn’t have anything to do with the teen’s death, and seems to have been chosen simply because he was a police officer.
In the weeks since Hinton carried out the car attack, he has attracted thousands of supporters online, fan edits of his court appearances have gone viral with millions of views, and nearly $100,000 has been donated to support his defense and his family. Hinton’s defenders have sought to place his actions in the context of institutional police violence against Black people.
“A lot of African Americans are tired of the police seemingly unjustifiably killing Black individuals without recourse or without punishment,” Clyde Bennett, Hinton’s attorney, told The Independent.
Some say they understood how the pain of losing a son at the hands of police could have caused Hinton to lash out in the way that he did. Others compare it to the alleged killing of a healthcare executive by Luigi Mangione, who is often depicted as a cult hero standing up against the health insurance industry.
Hinton’s “actions have been received and accepted by a lot of people because they can identify and relate to his experience, and they believe that they can understand why he did what he did, because they may have done the same thing in similar circumstances,” Bennett added.
Hinton faces the possibility of the death penalty if he is convicted on charges of two counts of aggravated murder of the retired deputy. Bennett said his client intends to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, explaining that seeing the video of his son’s death triggered a psychiatric episode.
“I’ve got the medical records to prove it — he was not in his right frame of mind when he committed the act that he did. He did not understand the wrongfulness of his conduct because of his mental condition. I think he was insane at the time,” Bennett said.
The investigation into the police killing of Ryan Hinton is ongoing.
Police bodycam footage from May 2 in the East Price Hill neighborhood of Cincinnati shows officers arriving at a stolen vehicle parked on a dead-end street, and four men running from the vehicle.
A man later identified as Ryan Hinton is seen dashing out from between two dumpsters and away from the officers. As he does so, one of the officers shouts “He’s got a gun!” several times. Another officer opens fire and continues firing as Hinton runs past him.
Police later showed photographs of a loaded gun they say Hinton was holding. A coroner said the round that likely killed Hinton entered just under his armpit, ricocheted off a rib, hit his heart, and exited the front through his chest.
Cincinnati Police Chief Teresa Theetge defended the officer who fired the shots.
“Based on the officer’s interviews, the officer who did discharge his firearm said that when the individual came out between the dumpsters, he had the firearm in front of him. He was in like a bladed position, and [the gun] was pointed at the officer, and he felt threatened for his life. And that’s why he discharged his firearm,” Theetge said.
The day after the shooting, Hinton and the rest of Ryan Hinton’s family were invited into the police station to watch the footage of the incident for themselves.
Theetge met with the family at 9:30 a.m. to review the footage. After just 20 minutes, Hinton “was so upset he left the building,” Hamilton County Prosecutor Connie Pillich said at a press conference.
Hinton’s family was worried about his mental state in the hours after he had seen the footage.
Just after 1 p.m., Hinton pulled over into a middle lane and looked down a hill where Henderson, a marine veteran, was directing traffic at an intersection for the University of Cincinnati’s spring graduation ceremony. Henderson was standing just off the road, underneath a tree for shade.
Hinton then “floors the vehicle,” according to Pillich, crossed into traffic lanes, and drove directly at Henderson, hitting him.
“He never veers off course, he never slows down,” she said.
Hinton appeared in court for his arraignment the day after. The courtroom was packed with local police officers, together with a sizeable number of Hinton Jr.’s family members.
Soon after, videos of that appearance began appearing on TikTok and other social media. One video, liked more than 412,000 times, showed a slow-motion clip of Hinton walking past a long line of police officers in the courtroom set to Sam Cooke’s civil rights anthem ‘A Change is Gonna Come.’
Another version of the same clip, captioned “the hate in their eyes” — referring to the police officers — had been liked 1.6 million times.
T-shirts, yard signs and mugs for $20 a piece emblazoned with the image of Hinton in an orange jumpsuit walking by the police officers in the courtroom, with the words “Free Rodney Hinton Jr.”, are available to buy online.
In Cincinnati, Hinton’s actions were largely condemned. But online, they sparked a debate about the lasting impact of police violence on Black Americans.
“Rodney Hinton Jr. doing what he did was absolutely a direct reaction to watching the body cam footage of his son. But I also feel like DECADES of watching Black people suffer at the hands of police brutality, and be failed by the justice system, played a role in his actions too,” wrote Cindy Noir, a podcaster and commentator.
Another writer compared the killing to that of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
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“If you’re Team Luigi Mangione, you should be Team Rodney Hinton Jr. too. Both men were pushed to the brink by violent systems—one by health insurance, the other by the murder of his child at the hands of police,” Leslie Vargas wrote for Afropunk.
“But only one is treated with sympathy. America always finds compassion for white rage while criminalizing Black grief. This isn’t about what’s justifiable—it’s about who gets to be seen as human. Justice in this country still depends on the color of your skin,” she continued.
In the days after the incident, the Black Panthers held a meeting in Cincinnati to organize in support of the father.
“We want to cause an epidemic towards the thinking that was expressed by Rodney Hinton,” said Mmoja Ajabu, a Black Panther leader, said at the meeting.
Online fundraising GoFundMe removed more than a dozen campaigns set up for him in the days after his arrest to help pay for legal fees quickly raised $5,000. That was shut down after protests from police unions, but another fundraiser on a different website set up by Hinton’s sister has raised over $53,000 at the time of writing. A separate fundraiser set up by his wife now stands at $48,000.
“Dylan Roof, Kyle Rittenhouse, Derek Chauvin and the rest of those racist bigots had go fund me after killing black men for no reason so we can donate to our people,” wrote one donor on the fundraiser page.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost called a press conference on Tuesday, calling for the website that is hosting those fundraisers, GiveSendGo, to take them down.
“We shouldn’t be crowdfunding an evildoer,” Yost said, while conceding that the company was not breaking any laws.
Bennett, Hinton’s attorney, said the case had split public opinion.
“You got a certain part of the community that believes that what he did was evil and retaliatory, and it was done with a sane mind. And then you got another half of the community that says I understand how he might be triggered and have a psychiatric episode as a result of seeing his son killed,” he told The Independent.
Meanwhile, Hinton’s family is distancing themselves from the online debate.
“Everybody is hurting off this,” said Rodney Hinton Sr, Ryan’s grandfather, at an emotional press conference, “the family, the officer, the mother.”
“I was crying about what happened to the officer, you know, so that’s what it was all about. It’s all about healing each other. Everybody makes mistakes. It was an emotional mistake,” he added.
Anna Booker-Hinton, Hinton Jr.’s wife, hit out at media coverage of the case on the fundraising page for her husband.
“The media is twisting this devastating incident, trying to portray Rodney—an African American father in pain—as an angry man lashing out. But I know without a shadow of a doubt: Rodney did not act out of retaliation. He was a grieving father in unimaginable pain,” she wrote.
Hundreds gathered for Henderson’s funeral service on 9 May, including dozens of police cruisers from across the state.
Ryan Hinton was laid to rest just over a week later with mourners wearing red, his favorite color, in tribute.
