May 13, 2021 6 min read

Chris Williams wept as he testified about being beaten nearly unconscious by several teens he had confronted inside a North Franklin Township movie theater, and the decision he made to draw his handgun as a “last resort” when he thought the group was about to attack him again as he tried to leave.

Williams took the witness stand Wednesday during his trial and claimed that one of the boys punched him first before he responded with an “impulse punch” as the rest of the group of teens began pummeling him when he told them to be quiet at the end of the movie.

“They all came swinging. I started swinging back. They beat me down between the chairs,” Williams said while choking back tears as he recalled the incident. “They started pounding on me. They just kept pounding.”

Williams said he suffered a concussion, two broken elbows, various bruises and tinnitus, which is a condition that causes constant ringing in a person’s ears.

He claimed when he went to leave the theater to get security to have the teens arrested, four of them were standing in the hallway blocking the exit. Williams drew his handgun, he testified, but one of the boys grabbed his hand and then the other boys piled on.

“If they get the gun, I’m dead,” Williams recalled thinking.

The gun fired while he was under the pile, Williams said, striking Anthony Ward in the right leg.

Ward, who was 17 at the time, survived the March 23, 2019, shooting inside the movie theater multiplex connected to Washington Crown Center mall in North Franklin Township. Williams, 55, of Waynesburg, is on trial this week accused of attacking the teens in the seating area while viewing the movie “Us” and then shooting Ward during the subsequent fight in the hallway.

During cross-examination, Senior Deputy Attorney General Patrick Schulte asked why Williams decided to escalate the situation by confronting the teens about their behavior during the movie rather than getting the theater’s security or just leaving altogether. The prosecutor surmised that Williams, a longtime corrections officer at SCI-Greene near Waynesburg, is not accustomed to others talking back to him, so he took matters into his own hands.

“You could’ve just left and got your money back, but you didn’t, did you?” Schulte asked Williams.

Schulte also noted that Williams’ testimony stands in direct contrast with every other prosecution witness who has testified this week accusing him of throwing the first punch during the initial fight and being alone in the exit hallway with Ward when the shooting occurred.

While Williams claimed there were multiple teens waiting to assault him again in the exit hallway, Constable Thomas Duncan, who was working security at the movie theater that night, testified Wednesday morning that only Ward and Williams were lying on the runway floor when he opened the door to the theater after the shooting.

Schulte also pointed out that the movie theater prohibits customers from bringing their firearms into the building, and questioned how Williams could miss the signs explaining that rule.

Earlier in the day’s testimony, Kenneth Clark Jr., who was watching the movie with friends and was seated in a row just in front of Williams, said he noticed the defendant getting agitated as the teens in the corner were talking. Williams then shouted at them to be quiet and the two sides engaged in back and forth comments until he stood up to go over to them, Clark said.

“They were taken by surprise that someone was even coming over to them,” Clark said. “He was very upset they weren’t listening to his commands or obeying him.”

As Williams confronted the teens, Clark then saw him reach over a seat and thrust his arm at one of them. The situation then devolved into a “cartoonish cloud of smoke” as the melee was on between Williams and the six teens, Clark said.

Defense attorney Al Lindsay brought up differences in Clark’s recollection of the events about where exactly the teens were sitting in the theater and whether Williams had to reach over a row to strike one of them. Clark thought the teens were a couple of rows in front of the back wall, while four of the teens testified Tuesday that the group was in the last two rows of the theater. There also was a difference between the two accounts over whether Williams was standing inside one of the rows or if he had to reach over a seat to throw a punch.

After the fight, Clark testified he saw Williams lying on the ground as the teens left using the nearby aisle. Williams then got up and ran down the stairs chasing after the teens and shouting to them, Clark said.

“Where do you (expletives) think you’re going?” Clark recalled Williams saying. “I’m not done with you yet.”

Williams later testified that he never made those comments while leaving the theater and that he was “seeing stars (and) dizzy” at the time.

A few moments later, Clark recalled hearing a “pop” that sounded like a gunshot, although people in the theater weren’t sure what had happened. Clark then heard Ward screaming in pain and they knew there had been a shooting.

“Oh my God. He just shot me,” Clark remembered hearing Ward shout from the theater’s entrance hallway. “I’m bleeding out. I can’t believe he just shot me.”

As others in the theater tried to leave, they found Williams handcuffed against the wall of the hallway and Ward undergoing initial medical treatment, Clark said. Police officers told them to go back into the theater, where Clark expected they would be interviewed, but state police troopers allowed them to leave without taking witness statements, he said.

He and others in his group came forward after seeing initial television news reports portraying the teens as being the aggressors, which Clark said is not what he saw happen inside the theater. Clark and another person in the group reached out to state police and were interviewed by investigators a few days later, he said.

The prosecution rested Wednesday afternoon, and the defense called four witnesses, including Williams, who spent the longest time on the stand recounting the events that preceded the shooting.

Williams testified that he considered himself the victim and originally expected state police to charge the group of boys for the incident. However, he was charged with aggravated assault, terroristic threats, simple assault, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct and harassment nearly a month after the incident.

The defense is expected to call two more witnesses Thursday, although it was unknown whether closing statements would begin later today or if Judge Valarie Costanzo would hand the case over to the jury for deliberations.