By Gari Voss
Tuesday, March 7, 2023 Richard Lee-Raymond Ward-Perry (24) of Battle Creek was arrested. On Wednesday, March 8, 2023, Ward-Perry was arraigned in Allegan County’s 57th District Court for Assault with Intent to do Great Bodily Harm less than murder and Felonious Assault.
Nov. 3, 2021, William “Bill” Simpson stopped at the Circle K gas station in Otsego, MI on M-89 near US131 to get gas. He backed up to the pump for which he had been waiting and was getting out of his car when another vehicle pulled to the same pump. The driver jumped out of his car, assaulted Simpson, then drove away.
In an interview in November 2021 with WOOD, Simpson (86), a US Army Veteran and retired Chaplin at Otsego VFW Post 3030, shared, “I said, ‘I’ve been sitting here for five minutes waiting for gas. You just come off the highway’, and then he just smacked me,”
Continuing, “If it was me pulling in there like that, and I saw the guy and he had a veteran’s hat on, I would have said, ‘Go ahead fella, you earned it,’ but he didn’t say that.”
Simpson suffered severe facial lacerations and fractures, a broken nose, and teeth were knocked out. He was treated at the hospital then released.
Even with the injuries, he was still willing to forgive the young man that he described as a Black man with light-green dreadlocks who was in his 20s or 30s.
On January 11, 2023, Simpson passed, but not from the injuries suffered in the Nov. 3rd altercation.
Ward-Perry will remain in Allegan until his trial.
So sad he was treated this way in his last days of life. What ever happened to respecting our elders and service members?