A Penn Township man is facing homicide charges relating to the death of a man who passed away at a hospital several days after a Hanover bar fight in 2023, according to newly filed charges issued by Hanover Borough police.
Aaron Michael Wright, 34, of Penn Township, faces felony charges of murder in the third degree as well as aggravated assault, according to documents filed by Hanover Borough police on Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024.
Wright was denied bail, due to the “gravity of the charge,” and was confined in York County Prison following his arraignment on the charges Tuesday afternoon in front of District Judge Michael R. Gessner in Hanover.
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The charges relate to a bar fight that reportedly occurred at The Circle, a popular downtown Hanover bar on the first block of East Walnut Street, late on the evening of Wednesday, March 15, 2023, according to the documents.
The affidavit of probable cause filed by police against Wright states that officers were called to the bar around 10:43 p.m. on March 15, 2023 for a bar fight that had left a man unconscious.
When they arrived, they found a Hanover man – identified by police in the affidavit simply with his initials, “B.S.” – laying on the ground inside the bar, the affidavit states. The victim was conscious at the time, refused EMS treatment, according to the criminal complaint, and was eventually transported to his residence by an acquaintance.
Officers spoke with Wright, along with multiple witnesses on the scene, who expressed that the victim and Wright had been involved in an altercation at the bar, according to the affidavit.
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Wright told officers that the victim had stumbled into him while Wright was seated at the bar, and that later that night the victim had “come towards him” and Wright claimed to officers that he had struck the victim in self-defense, the affidavit states.
Officers later reviewed surveillance footage from inside the bar, which showed the victim walking past Wright around 10:27 p.m. to place a glass on the bar, with the two exchanging words with each other, the affidavit states.
The victim then walks away from Wright, then returns several moments later, with a verbal confrontation taking place, according to the affidavit.
During that confrontation, police state in the affidavit that the victim is seen shoving the man sitting next to Wright, then backing away. After the shove takes place, Wright allegedly punches the victim in the right side of his face, near his eye, according to the affidavit.
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The victim then “immediately drops to the ground and appears to strike the knee wall behind him as he falls to the ground,” police wrote in the affidavit.
In an interview with the man next to Wright at the bar that the victim had reportedly shoved, the man told officers that Wright had accused the victim of bumping into him as the victim walked behind him, leaving Wright “visibly irritated,” according to the affidavit.
The man said, as outlined in the affidavit, that when the victim returned, he asked the victim to give Wright space, resulting in the shove by the victim. After Wright struck the victim, the man stepped back and “became emotional,” while Wright allegedly told the man that it was “handled” and that it was “self defense.”
Another patron at the bar, who was identified as being an off-duty medical worker, immediately ran to check on the victim, according to the affidavit, and told officers that the victim had displayed suppressed breathing while unconscious and had a large hematoma on the back of his head, where the patron believed the victim had struck his head on the cement floor.
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Despite attempts by the patron, along with a bartender and EMS crews who responded, to convince the victim to go to the hospital, the victim refused to be evaluated or treated as he “wanted to go home,” the affidavit states.
The day after the altercation, around 11:50 a.m. on March 16, 2023, an ambulance was called to the victim’s home in Hanover for a reported medical emergency, according to the affidavit.
The victim’s wife had reported to 911 dispatchers that she had left the house that morning with the victim laying on the couch asleep, then returned home around the time of the ambulance call to find her husband laying on the floor of the house covered in blood, according to charging documents.
Officers investigated the scene and found that it appeared that the victim had lost his balance and fallen in the home, the affidavit states.
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The victim was unable to communicate outside of “mumbling,” the documents state, and was transported to UPMC Hanover hospital to be treated.
Around 11:45 p.m. on March 21, 2023, Hanover police were notified that the victim had passed away at UPMC Harrisburg Hospital, where he had been transported for “advanced life-saving treatment,” the criminal complaint states.
An autopsy found that the victim had suffered multiple skull fractures, according to the criminal complaint.
The Dauphin County Coroner’s Office ruled the cause of death for the victim as being due to a traumatic brain injury, and determined that the death was a homicide, the affidavit states.
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In a later interview with Wright at the Hanover police station described in the affidavit, Wright told officers he had not met the victim prior to that night, and had felt threatened because of having been previously diagnosed with “aortic stenosis” in 2004, which Wright claimed to officers meant any hard blow to his chest “could potentially kill him.”
At the request of the York County District Attorney’s Office, the doctor who conducted the autopsy reviewed evidence in the case against Wright, and “concluded that the defendant’s punch caused the series of events that ultimately led to the death of B.S., and that the death of the B.S. was directly related to the punch thrown by the defendant.”
A preliminary hearing for Wright is scheduled for Jan. 28, 2025, records show.
Harrison Jones is the Hanover reporter for the Evening Sun. Reach him at hjones@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Hanover Evening Sun: Hanover, Pa. man charged with murder in third degree after bar fight
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