Jul 2, 2020 5 min read

The victim of a shooting last year at the Regal Crown Center theater in North Franklin Township described at a pre-trial hearing in Washington County Court Wednesday morning a racial confrontation.

Requesting the hearing was the defense attorney for Chris Allan Williams, 53, of Waynesburg, who has been charged with aggravated assault, terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and harassment.

Anthony Ward, now 18, was a juvenile at the time he was watching the movie, “Us,” a tale of psychological horror, with friends the night of March 23 when, during a climactic scene, “there was a lot of noise coming from my area, noise from our area,” he said.

Williams rose from his seat in the audience and walked up to the row where Ward and friends were seated, “and started yelling at us,” Ward testified, repeating an expletive directed toward the group with Williams saying they should “shut up” during the movie he had paid to watch.

Ward said Williams was met with the reply that they had paid the same amount of money, and the confrontation escalated into a physical one, with a seated friend of the victim struck on the lip.

“My friend threw a couple punches to Mr. Williams’ face area,” Ward testified.

Others joined in and Ward described Williams as landing on the floor under other people.

“At the time, did you have the impression you were defending your friend?” First Assistant District Attorney Dennis Paluso asked.

“Yes,” replied Ward, who is Black.

Williams is white.

Ward said the group with whom he had been seated ran from the theater, but he, walking, was the last of them to leave. As he advanced down a hallway a few feet from an exit, Ward said Williams came from behind him and he saw a gun pointed at his face.

“He called me the N-word,” testified Ward, who said a scuffle at floor-level ensued. “I was moving around so much, the gun went off and I got shot in the leg.”

Ward said he had been attempting to disarm an attacker.

With a bullet lodged in his lower right calf, Ward was eventually flown by helicopter to Allegheny General Hospital, Pittsburgh, and, about a month later, underwent surgery.

Under cross-examination by Williams’ attorney, Jack Puskar asked if Ward and his client exchanged any words in the hallway.

“Not that I recall,” replied Ward, who also said he could feel the gun beneath his stomach when the struggle occurred on the floor.

Paluso, in redirect questioning, used the word “traumatic” to describe Ward’s recollection of the account, and Ward agreed with the prosecutor’s terminology.

Ward was the sole witness at the 20-minute proceeding before Judge Valarie Costanzo, who said she would take the matter under advisement.

Paluso submitted to the judge recordings and a transcript from a preliminary hearing in May 2019. Cell phone video recorded inside the darkened theater includes audio.

Because he was a juvenile at the time of the theater episode, Ward was previously unidentified in court documents.

Williams, who was present in court Wednesday, is a corrections officer at SCI-Greene. Puskar said after the hearing that his client is on leave from his job.

Treated and released from a hospital the night of the confrontation, Williams was not charged until April 30. Despite protest marches and rallies held on behalf of the victim, Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone said during the interim that he continued to investigate the matter.

Once Williams was charged, critics said the defendant should have been charged with attempted homicide.

Vittone’s opponent raised the matter during the 2019 fall political campaign.

“If one of my clients had shot someone in that theater, he would have been in handcuffs that day,” said Assistant Public Defender Jake Mihalov, Democratic nominee for Washington County district attorney.

Vittone handily won re-election to a third term last November.

Recent high-profile cases, including the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, in which white police officers have been charged with killing Black victims have sparked worldwide protests.

Asked if this would have any bearing on the prosecution, Paluso said, “We really aren’t allowed to talk about how we’re going to prosecute a case while it’s ongoing. Obviously, there’s been more of a national dialog about unlawful shootings.”

Should the case go to trial, “I have full confidence in the citizens of Washington County that they would be able to come up with an impartial jury,” Puskar said after the hearing.

Williams had requested a habeas corpus hearing, which Paluso described in layman’s terms as “basically a preliminary hearing re-do. They’re saying we can’t meet the level of the crimes charged with our own evidence.”

He said the Commonwealth is ready to go to trial this month, but scheduling is up to the judge.

Puskar speculated a trial might take place in August or September.