A man at the center of an Oklahoma license plate battle is now dead.

Keith Kimmel, a gay rights activist, gained much attention when Oklahoma refused his request for a license plate reading “IM GAY.”

More recently, Kimmel filed a formal complaint with the police after an altercation with them outside a nightclub.

Kimmel told his friend Kerri Logsdon that officers “dragged me around the parking lot on my stomach” and “hit my head on the door frame several times.”

Investigators still wait for reports from medical examiners to determine Kimmel’s exact cause of death, which occurred in his apartment two days after the police dispute.

“Whether or not his death was a direct result of the beating he received from the Tulsa Police Department Friday night,” said Logsdon, “it was still a hate crime.”

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