Bar brawl tears apart family, sets table for historic Lucas County legal fight | 11 Investigates

Warning: The following video shows a punch being thrown that rendered a man unconscious. He later died. Viewer discretion is advised.

The figures are ghost-like on the surveillance video. There is no audio, just the figures flitting about the screen, unaware of the chaos about to ensue.

Richter is talking with a regular, Doug Sharp, at the bar inside Brew-Ha’s. His uncle is nearby, listening in. Richter’s right arm is in a sling, the result of rotator cuff surgery eight days earlier.

As Richter leans in to talk with Sharp, a woman, Krystal Witfoth, approaches him from behind. After whispering something to him, she leans in for a hug but is rebuffed by Richter.

Months later, Witfoth told two separate juries that Richter had been sending her flirtatious text messages. Seeing him in the bar, she said she was concerned that he would cause problems because she had rebuffed his advances, so she was trying to be friendly and short-circuit any potential conflict.

He told a much different story in a recent interview with 11 Investigates.

“She knew I recently had shoulder surgery,” Richter said, claiming that when leaned in, she asked him for a Percocet.

Two men that she came to the bar with, Carl Wimpey and Khalil Moussaed, then enter the video. They stand at the bar next to the three men: Richter; his uncle, Daniel Vasquez; and Sharp. Witfoth retreats to the far end of the bar.

At one point, Richter walks over to talk to Witfoth, then returns to his spot next to Sharp. He then gestures toward Witfoth. Court witnesses said he yelled that the bar was filled with “Punk-a-- b------.” Richter said that he yelled, “She’s a pill-addicted b----.”

Whatever the phrasing, Wimpey, who is 6 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 290 pounds, took offense and asked Richter what he had said. In the video, Richter moves toward Wimpey, then darts away and grabs a pool stick. Sharp grabs him from behind and Witfoth takes the stick from him.

But the arguing continues, and eventually, a physical fight erupts. It appears that Wimpey grabs Richter by the throat. Vasquez is shoved to the ground by Moussaed, then hit with three or four punches by Wimpey. As Wimpey and Moussaed leave the bar, Wimpey grabs a beer bottle and throws it at Richter, hitting him in the head.

Richter then follows them out of the bar with two beer bottles and slings the bottles toward Moussaed’s truck.

“My intent by doing that was to bust the headlight. After what happened that night, there was no way the police weren’t going to be involved because of what happened to my uncle and myself,” Richter said.

Wimpey told a jury that he and Moussaed believed they were in danger. Despite saying he felt endangered, he and Moussaed charged toward the bar. Richter attempts to lock the door, but Moussaed forced it open.

Richter was knocked to the ground and kicked. Trying to help, Vasquez was hit by a left hook from Wimpey and knocked unconscious. He never woke up and was removed from life support four days later.

When asked if he had regrets about that night, Richter replied: “I wish I had gone home.”

Less than three months after the brawl, a Lucas County grand jury indicted Richter with one count of inciting violence.

Prosecutors argued that Richter caused Wimpey to attack his uncle by continuing to escalate the situation.

Not surprisingly, Richter disagrees, arguing that he only picked up the pool stick after Wimpey said he was going to “beat my a--.” He never swung the stick and it was easily taken from him by Witfoth. But rather than de-escalating, Richter continued to engage Wimpey until finally, the much bigger man grabbed him by the throat and bodies began to fly. However, at no point in the video is Richter seen throwing a punch.

After the indictment, Richter’s attorney mentioned the possibility of a plea deal.

“I had hired an attorney and he’d come to me and told me that he could probably get me [a fourth-degree felony], attempt to commit an offense. And I said, ‘An attempt to commit an offense of what?’” Richter said.

But then negotiations with prosecutors took a darker turn. Richter and his wife, Kristen, told 11 Investigates that they threatened to indict him for complicity in the commission of murder if he did not take a plea deal.

The legal definition of complicity is essentially aiding or abetting someone in committing a crime. Prosecutors told the jury that Richter’s actions led to the death of his uncle.

“I thought this was a joke,” Richter said.

Kristen thought it was so far-fetched that she told him there was no way he should take a deal.

“I figured if they had enough evidence to do that, they would have done that in the first place,” Kristen said. “They’re just threatening him. There’s no way.”

It wasn’t a bluff. On June 25, 2018, Richter was re-indicted for complicity in the commission of murder, a first-degree felony, punishable by life in prison.

On Sept. 17, a two-day trial began, with Richter’s defense team arguing the case should be thrown out because there wasn’t enough to prove incitement or complicity. The team was so sure of success that they didn’t call a single witness. Not only did the judge not throw out the case, but the jury then convicted Richter on both charges. He was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

Jurors took only two-and-a-half hours to reach a verdict, a speediness that usually bodes well for a defendant.

“I assumed that I was going home. It’s over. When they called me back over to court, I looked at my wife and family and said, ‘It’s going to be OK. This is almost over,’” Richter said. “When the verdict was read, it was a complete shock.”

Richter was taken so quickly from the courtroom, that he was not able to talk to his wife. In the galley, she almost collapsed, but regrouped and made her way to the hallway.

“He called me on the phone while I was standing outside the courtroom. All we could say was ‘Oh my God, what just happened? Oh my God, what just happened?’”

Richter was eventually sent to Lebanon Correctional Institution, about halfway between Cincinnati and Dayton. Kristen was left to pick up the pieces.

“It felt like my whole life had been ripped away from me. It was ripped away from me. My security, my whole everything was gone,” Kristen said. “It shattered me. If you can think of a mirror or a piece of glass, I shattered into thousands of pieces.”

Kristen and Arty have been together for a little more than 10 years and married since 2017. Throughout their relationship, she played the role of the optimist, while a hard life had left him jaded and pessimistic.

After his conviction, their roles reversed.

“I used to always be the positive one. When they read that guilty verdict, I lost all hope,” she said. “He didn’t lose hope, and I’m so grateful for that because I did.”

The hope paid off when the Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals in 2019 sided with Richter and vacated not only the complicity conviction but also the incitement charge.

When it came to the complicity charge, the panel said there was no evidence that Richter colluded with Wimpey in attacking his uncle.

“Having examined the record, we agree with the appellant that the state has not met its burden of establishing evidence to prove that appellant acted with a shared criminal intent in this case,” the court wrote. “Indeed, there is nothing in the record to support the conclusion that appellant intended to help Wimpey commit a felonious assault on Vasquez, appellant’s uncle.”

The judges ruled similarly regarding the incitement charge. Under the Ohio Revised Code, inciting to violence is defined as “no person shall knowingly engage in conduct designed to urge or incite another to commit any offense of violence…”

The justices noted that “although Vasquez happened to become embroiled in the fight that resumed after appellant threw beer bottles at (the truck), there is nothing in the record to support the notion that appellant’s conduct was designed to urge or incite Wimpey to commit an offense of violence against Vasquez.”

In early January 2020, Richter was released from Lebanon Correctional, nearly two years after the death of his uncle.

The Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals' 2019 decision can be read in its entirety below:

Daniel Vasquez was a well-known figure in his Point Place neighborhood. The doting grandfather often made the rounds with his granddaughter, Adeline, taking her for near-daily walks. She was one of his six grandchildren.

"The neighbors would always say how cute they were. He loved his grandkids," Darlene Vasquez, his wife of 11 years, said.

Darlene and Daniel knew each other for nearly their entire lives, and she is now facing life without her best friend.

Their friends joked that "Dan never went anywhere without Darlene." In fact, she was invited to go out with the men the night he died, but she decided to stay home because she had to work early in the morning.

The last time she saw him, she watched the surveillance video in court. At no point was Vasquez an aggressor and at times appeared to be trying to calm the situation. Those actions aren't surprising to Darlene.

"He was a good man," she said. "I want people to know that he was a kind man and he'd give you the shirt off his back. Everyone liked him."

Richter’s civil trial against the state of Ohio is scheduled for January, but it is expected to be resolved in summary judgment at some point in December. If the judge rules that Richter was wrongfully imprisoned, he can ask the Ohio Court of Claims to compensate him for the nearly two years he lost in jail and prison.

The wrongful imprisonment designation has never happened in Lucas County, though Danny Brown’s civil case is also progressing through the courts related to his 1981 wrongful conviction. His trial is set for June.

“This isn’t about compensation. It’s about righting the wrongs and standing up to the system for what they do. It’s never been about money,” Richter said.

Kristen said she’s stronger but still healing. Arty said his anger is mostly gone.

“I found peace. It took a long time to find peace," he said. "I saw a meme that says, ‘What did peace cost?’ It cost me financially, my freedom. But at this point, I’ve found peace.”