By James Nerlinger, Jr. | Guest contributor
Larry Henderson retired on December 17, 2024, with thirty-seven years of service behind him. Three days later he came back to work as a Special Deputy. If you understand that sentence, you understand the man, and you understand why I am writing this.
Thirty-seven years, and then three more days
Larry and I sat in the same room at the Sheriff’s Academy, working toward our Ohio peace officer certifications. That is where I met my friend.
Early on I struggled with my aiming, and with the recoil. Larry worked with me on both. He did it the way a man fixes something he has done ten thousand times and can still explain from the beginning, without making you feel stupid for needing the explanation. A Marine expert marksman was exactly what I needed, and I did not know that until I had one.
He had been one since May 28, 1985. Parris Island, then the 3rd Marine Division at Pearl Harbor as an antitank missile gunner, honorably discharged in 1989, recalled in 1991 to crew an M1A1 tank, out as a Corporal.
He got me through PT, too. I am not a runner and I have never pretended to be one. Larry ran beside me anyway, talking the whole way, which I have since decided was the point.
And on one particular morning of exercises he made sure every person in that class knew whose birthday it was. Chesty Puller. June 26, 1898. He explained it at length, and with obvious satisfaction, to a group of people who had not asked.
He joined the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office on June 14, 1991, starting where most start, in corrections. Patrol by December 1997. Hazardous materials technician in 2001. An award in 2007 for supervising the Sheriff’s dive team. Regional SWAT in 2013. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force from 2018 to 2021. Bomb detection, on the strength of what the Marine Corps taught him. Somewhere in all of that he was a DARE officer at Wilson Elementary, which is how a generation of kids on the west side knew him.
He fished. He rescued pit bulls, one after another, and found them homes. He leaves his wife, five children, four grandchildren, and his sister.
Before the academy ended, he and his wife had the whole class out to their place for a holiday cookout. When we came in, Larry was lying on a bed in a back room with a baby asleep on his chest. He did not get up for a while. Nobody expected him to. That is the picture I have carried for years, and it is the one I cannot get out of my head now.
He was fifty-seven. I am fifty-seven. On May 2, 2025, he was standing at Martin Luther King Drive and Burnett Woods Drive directing traffic at a university graduation, because a man who had already given thirty-seven years could not sit still for three days.
What happened on May 2
The day before, on May 1, a Cincinnati police officer shot and killed eighteen-year-old Ryan Hinton during a response to a report of a stolen vehicle. The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office later found that shooting justified.
The morning of May 2, Ryan’s father, Rodney Hinton Jr., was shown the body camera footage. Hours later he drove his car into Larry Henderson.
I want to be precise about something, because precision is the only thing that makes the rest of this worth saying. Larry had nothing to do with Ryan Hinton’s death. He was not there. He did not know the officer involved. He was directing traffic at a commencement ceremony one day and three miles away from it. He was a badge in a crowd, and that was enough.
He had been retired four months. He had spent them going back to work. A man who gave this community thirty-seven years was run down by a member of that community, in the middle of an intersection, while walking its graduates safely across the street. Larry Henderson was a true American hero, and I do not use that phrase loosely.
The Greater Cincinnati Police Museum notes that in 233 years of law enforcement in this region, this was the first time an officer was killed solely for wearing the badge. Not in a struggle. Not in a pursuit. For the uniform.
On January 15, 2026, Judge Jody Luebbers found that Hinton suffers from a qualifying serious mental illness that significantly impaired his rational judgment, and dismissed the capital specifications. He can no longer be sentenced to death. His plea is now not guilty by reason of insanity. Trial begins October 5.
I am not going to argue with that ruling. I think it is correct. A man watched footage of his son being killed by police and something in him came apart. Ohio law says a person in that condition cannot be executed, and Ohio law is right about that.
But a man can be broken and still be responsible. There is no version of this in which Larry Henderson deserved to die, and there is no version in which what happened to Ryan Hinton is answered by it. Rodney Hinton Jr. is not innocent. He does not deserve to be executed. He deserves to spend the rest of his life in prison.
Why that sentence is not guaranteed
Here is what most people reading about this case do not know.
Hinton still faces the aggravated murder count. The judge’s ruling removed a sentence, not a charge. But with death off the table, Ohio law leaves a judge four options for aggravated murder: life without parole, or life with parole eligibility after twenty, twenty-five, or thirty years.
Twenty years. A man convicted of deliberately running down a peace officer can, under the law as it stands today, stand in front of the parole board at sixty-eight years old.
That is not a prediction about this trial. It is a description of what the statute currently permits. The only thing standing between that outcome and a life sentence is one judge’s discretion on one afternoon.
House Bill 372—the Larry Henderson Act—removes those three parole-eligible terms where the victim is a peace officer, a corrections officer, a prosecutor, a first responder, or a member of the military. It leaves death or life without parole, and nothing in between. For a defendant who cannot be sentenced to death, that means life without parole becomes the only sentence available.
That is the entire bill. It does not create new crimes. It does not touch anyone who has not been convicted of aggravated murder. It says that if you deliberately kill the people we send toward danger, you do not come back out.
Where the bill is right now
The Ohio House passed HB 372 on March 26, 2026. It went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which took proponent testimony on June 10 and has not moved it since.
That is where it sits today, a month before the trial of the man accused of killing the deputy it is named for.
The Larry Henderson Act cannot change what happens in Rodney Hinton’s case. The law cannot retroactively increase the punishment for a crime already committed. Its purpose is to change what happens the next time.
If you live in Ohio, find your state senator at ohiosenate.gov and ask them to move House Bill 372 out of the Judiciary Committee and onto the floor. If your senator sits on that committee, say so when you call. Ask by bill number. Ask by name—the Larry Henderson Act. Write, call, or email; all three get counted, and staff count them.
I am not asking anyone to be angry. Anger is easy and it accomplishes nothing. I am asking for ten minutes and one phone call, on behalf of a man who gave thirty-seven years and then could not stay retired for three days.
He was a Marine. He was a deputy. He was a father, a grandfather, and a man who spent his weekends finding homes for dogs nobody wanted. He was my friend.
He was a badge in a crowd to the man who killed him. He should not be one to us.
In memory of Special Deputy Sheriff Larry Ray Henderson, Jr.
June 11, 1967 – May 2, 2025 | Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office
Greater Cincinnati Police Museum — Line of Duty
Obituary and Tribute Wall — Spring Grove
The family asked that donations be made to The Shield.
About the author
James Nerlinger, Jr. earned his Ohio peace officer certification at the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Academy, where he met Larry Henderson. He is a Cincinnati-area writer, software author, and a guest contributor to this site. More of his work can be found at infobin.com.
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