Tempe man beaten to death after granddaughter’s wedding

TEMPE, AZ - An 81-year-old Tempe man was beaten to death by teenagers while attending his granddaughter’s wedding in Virginia, in an apparently random attack.

George Baker’s son Gregg Baker, whose daughter was getting married, remembers his father’s last day. “[He was] hugging his granddaughter at her wedding reception, telling her how beautiful she looked, telling her how much he loved her.”

“We are strong, but it still makes me sick,” said Leslie Gahagan, the bride. “How could you do that to an old man?”

Two 16-year-olds and a 13-year-old have been charged with murder. Prosecutors say they will decide in the next few days whether to charge the teenagers as adults.

The crime sent shock waves through Lynchburg, Virginia, but it broke hearts in Tempe.

“We mowed our lawns together and talked all the time,” said Baker’s friend and neighbor of 33 years, Chuck McIntyre, in tears. “Boy, I’m sure going to miss the guy, I know that.”

Investigators are calling the beating “mean spirited,” but have not said what the boys’ motive was. They did not take Baker’s wallet.

“He wouldn’t hurt a soul,” said Shannon Cipolla, who was also friends with Baker for three decades and worked with him at a golf course across the street from his home. “If they were after money, he probably would have handed them his wallet, and that would have been it.”

“I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to him personally,” said Gregg Baker.

For the couple who brought the family together to celebrate their marriage, and ended up mourning a grandfather whose life was cut short by teenagers, there is some peace in his last words.

Gregg Baker said his father told a pastor at the hospital, “If I die tonight, I die a happy man.”