On Sunday, 26-year-old racist Andrew Walls was charged with possession a firearm while intoxicated and for assaulting a 23-year-old Black woman after unleashing a stream of racist slurs and invective her way. As the clock turned from late Saturday night into the wee hours of Sunday morning, Walls got into a verbal and then physical altercation with a group of men on the street of a Highland Square, Ohio, neighborhood. On Monday, Walls reportedly turned himself into police. Police added a second assault charge that day as well.
According to video and eyewitness reports, Walls was intoxicated and saying racist things to another group of men. Walls then reportedly began to try and get physical with the men. At the same time, another group of friends who were unconnected to Walls or the group in conflict with him spoke up at Walls and the others, telling him not to say the racist stuff he was saying. It was at this point that the likely inebriated Walls decided to punch a young, unarmed woman in the face.
Oh, yeah, and while it is not yet officially confirmed, Walls is very likely the vice president of the Akron/Canton Chapter of the Proud Boys.
In a Facebook post, Alisha Howard, a friend of the woman Walls assaulted, wrote that she and her friends had been walking around Highland Square when they came upon this belligerent crew of racists who were in a verbal fight with some other men. Howard and her friends admonished Walls and his friend for yelling racist slurs at another group of men. “After about 2 mins of this he walked over and started a physical fight with the men and that’s why I began to record because it was quickly escalating.”
In the video Walls is dropping N-bombs and staggers forward to the group of women, which includes 23-year-old Cameron Morgan, a Black woman. Morgan and others seem to simply be pleading with the man to “stop saying” the racial slurs and to calm down when Walls points at Morgan, saying “N!*#@, B*&@#, shut your mouth.” He then punches her directly in the face. Morgan can be seen turning and covering her face after being hit. She was reportedly treated for a bloody lip and a concussion at the hospital.
Morgan said she was obviously shocked when Walls hit her, and covered up in defense before realizing she had a busted lip. She told WKYC News that unfortunately this kind of racism was still alive and well. “This is how the world is, there are people out there in the world who are like that. And the best thing you can do is just to be a good person, stay true to yourself and do what’s right. It’s 2022 and people are still acting like that.”
Morgan told the Akron Beacon Journal that when she and her friends came upon the scene outside, “They're all screaming. He's screaming '(racial slur) this, (racial slur) that'. I'm the only Black person around. I don’t know who he was talking to, but he was calling white people (a racial slur). We walked by, and me and (my friend) are just like ... ‘who talks like that? You can't say that. Like, that's not OK. You're in the most LGBTQ-friendly liberal neighborhood in Akron. And you're screaming all these racial slurs.”
The Beacon Journal reports Walls looks very similar to, and has an identical name to, a man identified in a photo from a previous Beacon Journal report on the Proud Boys from back in 2019. It seems that the 2019 report was not about Walls specifically, but the Ohio Proud Boys writ large. Therefore, while it seems likely that the image shows the same Andrew Walls who is now being charged with assault (amongst other things), the veracity of his Proud Boy claims from back in 2019 are not yet confirmed.
Authorities have told the Beacon Journal they are looking into whether or not Walls has ties with the well-known hate group the Proud Boys. "It’s obviously an angle we’re pursuing to see if there’s any link to gang activity," but Capt. Dave Laughlin said he could not definitively say Walls was indeed connected to the Proud Boys at this time.
Police say the delay in Walls’ charges came because most everyone left the scene after Walls attacked Morgan. Walls then told authorities that he was attacked by another group of people who disappeared before the police showed up. The police had no reason to believe he was lying at that time. The video, along with Morgan’s testimony, changed that. It does made one wonder whether or not the police saw Walls had a firearm at the time, as he (at least in the video) seems particularly inebriated.
In a coincidence that adds to tragic fabric of racism, Morgan’s 10th-grade math teacher was Walls’ mother. According to reports, Morgan did not know Walls as he was out of school by the time she was in his mother’s class.