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2021–2024 · AND WHAT FOLLOWED IN THE LEGISLATURE
Sarah Nicole Zent was twenty-six, and her children were Carter Matthew, five; Ashton Duwayne, three; and Aubree Christine, two. In the night of 1–2 June 2021 they were killed in their Fort Wayne home. The bodies were found late the following morning, 2 June. The man who had been living in the house — Cohen Bennett Hancz-Barron, 21, Sarah Zent's on-and-off boyfriend — had taken a neighbor's truck at dawn and driven west; he was arrested later that day in Lafayette. He was at the time serving a prior robbery sentence through a drug-rehabilitation program. The State charged him with four counts of murder and sought life imprisonment without parole on two statutory aggravators: that he had committed multiple murders, and that three of the victims were under the age of twelve.
The trial ran seven days in May 2022, before Allen Superior Judge Fran Gull. The jury convicted Hancz-Barron on all four counts, found both aggravating circumstances proved, and recommended life without parole. He chose not to attend his sentencing; in August 2022 the court imposed four consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. On direct appeal the Indiana Supreme Court took the case and, on 26 June 2024, affirmed in full — Hancz-Barron v. State, 235 N.E.3d 1237 (Ind. 2024), an opinion by Chief Justice Rush that held the evidence sufficient, the sentence neither inappropriate nor unconstitutional, and described the offenses in the court's own words as extraordinarily brutal. The appeal had challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, the trial court's decision to let the State recall a witness, and the sentence on statutory and constitutional grounds; the court rejected each challenge. No further detail belongs in this record; the opinion is public, and it is there that the case rests in law.
The case's second life is statutory, and it began with the empty chair at sentencing. Because Hancz-Barron had not been present when the family's victim-impact statements were read, Indiana legislators moved to require the defendant's presence for that part of a sentencing. The bill — Senate Bill 9 of the 2026 session, carried by Senator Liz Brown of Fort Wayne — is known by the name the family gave it: Aubree's Law, for the two-year-old. In January 2026 Indiana Public Media reported it advanced unanimously out of its Senate committee. Whatever its final course in the legislature, the case has already taken the place this section exists to record: it is the modern Fort Wayne murder case that reached beyond its courtroom and into the law of the state.
Sources:
- Hancz-Barron v. State, 235 N.E.3d 1237 (Ind. 2024), No. 22S-LW-310
- Allen Superior Court trial and sentencing record, May–August 2022, as reported
- Indiana Public Media, Senate Bill 9 (“Aubree's Law”) committee coverage, January 2026