Former Church Leader Dies in Custody Amid Abuse Charges

Former Kenai Church Leader, Aaron Merritt, Dies by Apparent Self-Inflicted Injuries in Custody; Charges DismissedAaron Scott Merritt, a former church leader in Kenai, Alaska, who faced serious charges of sexually abusing underage girls, has died in state custody at the age of forty-five. Merritt was found unresponsive in his cell at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on November twenty-first and passed away five days later. Authorities suggest his injuries were self-inflicted. Merritt was taken into custody earlier this year after a Kenai grand jury indicted him on twenty felony counts of sexual assault and abuse of a minor. The charges stemmed from allegations that Merritt abused four girls between nineteen ninety-eight and two thousand two, when he was a ministerial servant at the former Jehovahs Witnesses Kingdom Hall in Kenai. One of the women who accused Merritt, Jerikah Hall Santiago, gave permission to use her name and expressed disappointment that law enforcement did not contact her before releasing information about Merritts death. DNN | The Daily News Now! The world’s first global local news network. Every city. Every story. AI powered. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.