Tuesday, December 19, 2017
Staff report
FOWLER
One of the two Brothers Regime motorcycle club members who survived gunshot wounds at Shorty’s Place tavern in 2016 is in the Trumbull County jail facing weapons and traffic charges in a Saturday-afternoon traffic stop in Fowler Township.
Walter Hughes, 42, of Homewood Avenue in Leavittsburg, was arraigned Monday in Central District Court in Cortland on three counts of carrying a concealed weapon and single counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, driving under suspension and having an open container of alcohol in a motor vehicle. A judge set his bond at $25,000.
Jail records indicate his arrest may be a violation of his probation on an earlier criminal conviction.
Hughes spoke at the sentencing hearing last week of David Bailes Jr., 46, who killed Brothers Regime president Robert Marto, 54, Brothers member Jason Moore, 41, and badly injured Hughes and member Andrew Claypool, 50, on June 18, 2016, in Warren Township. Bailes was president of Forever Two Wheelz.
A Fowler Township police officer said when he made a traffic stop on the car Hughes was driving at 5:35 p.m. Saturday on state Route 11, he found Hughes had no driver’s license and later found Hughes had a firearm with no carrying-a-concealed-weapon permit, a knife and brass knuckles. Hughes said he carries weapons because he was shot during the Shorty’s biker-club shootout and receives death threats all the time.
The officer also found a one-third full bottle of whiskey in the vehicle. The officer asked Hughes if he takes any medications, and Hughes said he takes medication for anxiety, depression, insomnia and post- traumatic stress disorder.
The officer said he made the traffic stop because the car Hughes was driving was registered to a woman whose driver’s license had expired.
Hughes said the car belongs to his mother.