Fatal Beating Suspect In Trouble Before

PHILADELPHIA - One of the three men arrested for murder in this weekend's beating death near Citizens Bank Park has a history of violence, say police.

Three years ago, 28-year-old Francis Kirchner attacked a Delaware man outside Moe's Tavern in the city's Fishtown section, reported Fox 29's Robin Taylor.

Cody White was knocked unconscious and kicked repeatedly.

“A guy came from behind a car and hit me with a bottle in the face, laid me out, knocked me unconscious and then after that, it’s kinda, it’s kinda vague,” White told Fox 29.

“I turned him over in my arms. There was just blood rolling down the sidewalk," said Trish Casarotto, Cody’s girlfriend. “I was in tears, screaming and he was unresponsive. He was limp in my arms.”

White woke up in the hospital with a broken cheekbone and a half dozen stitches above his eye.

The attack was strikingly similar to the one that killed 22-year-old David Sale of Lansdale.

"It's haunting seeing this story. It makes me realize how lucky I was,” said White.

Kirchner plead guilty, but didn't do jail time. Instead, he was sentenced to anger management and probation.

“I didn’t want him to be in there forever, you know, but I wanted him to sit in there long enough to really thing about what he had done,” recalled Cyndy White, Cody’s mom.

“Justice is finally served on him probably, but it, you know, just had to take someone else’s life for this to happen when he almost took mine,” said Cody.

“It just stinks that it had to go as far as him killing someone else to hopefully be put away for good,” said Casarotto.

The other men involved in this beating were never caught.

Cody suspects they picked him for a fight after a night of drinking because he wasn’t from the neighborhood and that made him an easy target.