Ashley Thompson case:
“He started speaking with us, and I’m like, ‘I’m sorry. Can you just give us a moment?’” Thompson told Outside the Lines. “And he was like, ‘You don’t know who I am?’ And I was like, ‘I really don’t care who you are.’ And he kind of got angry at that point, and I told him to not-so-politely F-off.”
She says Walton — who at the time was an undergraduate student assistant coach under Tom Izzo — instantly became angry.
“I barely got the words out of my mouth, and he came across and he struck me on the right side of my face,” she says. “I kind of reached back toward him, and I didn’t make contact, and then that’s when he swung with a second reach and hit me on the left side of my face and hit me so hard that it knocked me backwards off of my barstool.”
The East Lansing Police Department spoke with two witnesses who corroborated Thompson’s account of the evening, and issued his arrest warrant on counts of misdemeanor assault and battery. Two months after pleading not guilty, Walton had his case dismissed, with the city attorneys letting him plead his case down to a civil infraction for littering. Thompson told OTL she was “absolutely livid,” and “heartbroken,” but that the same city attorneys advised her against running a complaint through the university.