Aaron Webster (June 1959 - November 17, 2001) was a gay man living in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, who was beaten by a group of men close to a gay cruising area in a wooded part of Stanley Park near Second Beach on November 17, 2001. According to reports, the youths came across a nearly naked Webster and chased him to a parking area, where they beat him with baseball bats. After the beating, Webster was found beside a path in the park by his close friend Tim Chisholm, and died within minutes in Chisholm's arms. Although some media called Webster's killing the first gay-related murder in Canadian history, much like the Matthew Shepard incident in the United States it merely attracted more widespread media attention than most earlier incidents. The coroner's report listed the cause of Webster's death as "a blow to the left side or back of the victim's neck. This blow caused a tear to the vertebral artery which resulted in a massive and rapidly fatal hemorrhage at the base of the brain." A march and vigil was organized by Little Sisters Bookstore co-owner Jim Deva, and took place the day after the killing, with hundreds of people marching through the streets of downtown Vancouver toward the site of Webster's death. Another rally, including British Columbia Human Rights Commissioner Mary-Woo Sims, was held several weeks later. Vigils were also held in several other Canadian cities. The killing was widely covered in the national news in Canada, and led to significant controversy around whether the attack constituted a hate crime. The incident also received some coverage in the mainstream media in the United States, although gay media reported it far more prominently. Prosecution The crime went unsolved for over a year. On February 12, 2003, police arrested the first of four suspects, a 19-year-old from Burnaby. Under Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, his name could not be published as he was only 17 at the time of the incident. Although the police investigated the crime as a gay bashing, the prosecutor chose not to prosecute the case as an anti-gay hate crime, which under Canadian law would have permitted a stiffer sentence but may have been more difficult to prove — instead, the case was treated as a simple manslaughter resulting from a robbery. The teenager pleaded guilty and told the police investigator that "the idea was to