CINCINNATI — A year after an investigation began into their son’s death, Bill and Sheila Wall have more questions than answers. While that sounds like a cliché, it is their truth.
“We just want to know what happened to Andrew and find out who was with him in his final hours,” Sheila said.
Their son, Andrew Wall, 26, was found dead on January 3, 2023, inside his Emerald View apartment in Price Hill. The couple hadn’t seen him for days and his last face-to-face conversation with them was on Christmas Day 2022, at their home in Northern Kentucky. He told them that he had planned to let a homeless man stay with him as the weather was brutally cold that night.
The Walls said it wasn’t out of the norm for Andrew to want to help someone but it was the first time he was opening his home.
“The first time he did that. First time. He would pick up hitchhikers all the time, but to invite him in his home? And he said, ‘mom he’s so nice,’” said Sheila.
The next day, Bill noticed random credit card charges on the card Andrew used and he called him about it.
“He just seemed very short and abrupt. I mentioned to him about, you know, the misuse or the credit card charges. And he said he hadn't had any issues, and kind of brushed me off and said, you know, seemed a little agitated and said, ‘I'll talk to you later.’ Very short, less than a minute call, then after the fact, we find all these charges kept multiplying,” said Bill.
They add up to nearly $2,000 between December 26 and 29. You can see those here:
Andrew Wall's credit ca... by WCPO 9 News
Months after Andrew’s death, his parents learned he was admitted to the hospital on Dec. 28.
“The police did tell us that 911 calls were made from his phone,” Bill said. “You can hear Andrew’s voice in the background. So we know Andrew went to the hospital.”
He showed up at Good Samaritan hospital by ambulance. The medical records provided by the family show he arrived at 3:51 a.m. and was admitted into the ER at 3:56 a.m. The diagnoses include “opiate overdose, accidental or unintentional,” exacerbation of asthma and “psychoactive substance abuse.”
The Walls said they knew he used marijuana and mushroom tea but say they never knew him to use opiates.
Andrew was discharged from the hospital that morning at 6:50 a.m.
“He was taken by ambulance, but how did he get back to his apartment and then shortly thereafter had an overdose? That doesn't make sense to us ... It's, it's very frustrating that all these pieces don't make sense. And yet, the police aren't questioning any of those components that don't make sense," said Bill.
Those components, according to the family, include but aren’t limited to the credit card charges, Andrew’s missing rings, earrings and phone and other valuables at his apartment, and the fact that there was no drug residue or paraphernalia found.
“So that means to me that the scene was cleaned up,” Bill said. “We collected all the credit card information, fraudulent charges that were made around the time of Andrew's death and even, probably after, his car was stolen. All those things were stolen. We documented all that got all that information to the police wanting them to, at a minimum, question somebody.”
They said police told them only “two people know what happened, Andrew and the person that he was with, and it's their word against his about what happened.”
Andrew’s car was found outside the downtown branch of the Cincinnati Public Library about two weeks after his body was found.
With all the information they collected and, perceiving a lack of investigatory work from Cincinnati police, one of Andrew’s best friends took action on TikTok.
“You know, he was found at his apartment, but what led up to that point was weird,” said Breanna Sturm, “I mean, you're telling me that he passed away, but he called for help, got help at a hospital. And then nobody was interviewed from the hospital that picked him up. And there was also a note that was addressed to somebody that he was talking really weird to. And I don't know, there's just a lot of questions."
She said it seemed “there was no story there, it was just an overdose. And that's how they made it out to be.”
But the podcast “Culpable” thought there was a story to be told and reached out to Sturm after stumbling onto her TikTok videos in early 2023. The two-part podcast dropped in August, shortly before WCPO 9 interviewed the Walls.
The podcast is the reason the family learned of the hospital stay.
WCPO's investigation is how Andrew's parents first saw the full report of Andrew’s toxicology report, which gave a more detailed explanation as to why the coroner filed his death as “accidental, fentanyl and cocaine intoxication,” but it didn’t give them any more answers into his final hours.
WCPO 9 first reached out to police about the case on August 24 of this year. We asked for 911 calls, computer-aided dispatch (CAD) reports, incident reports and any dash/body camera footage of the official response regarding the death of Andrew Thomas Wall.
The reply WCPO received was “Under investigation. Here is CAD, everything else is pending.”
WCPO was eventually able to get the incident report, which detailed a 911 call about a “death smell” coming from Andrew’s apartment at 10:57 a.m. that day and by 11:39 a.m. the report says the call was changed from a suspicious incident run to that of a "probable DOA (dead on arrival)" run.
WCPO did not receive replies to requests for an interview with the detective assigned to the case, despite following up on Sept 19 and Dec. 18.
Sturm and Andrew’s parents said they feel police see his death as a typical overdose while ignoring the circumstances. Sheila described this exchange with the assigned detective to the case:
“He (Andrew) was with us all the time and with the siblings, and he's not a drug addict. He's not, you know, the typical like fentanyl overdose, I think that the police are assuming. And the one detective said, ‘I don't think you really knew your son. He was living by himself. You don't know what he was doing?’ And I said, ‘Yes, yes. I knew my son. That's ridiculous.’”
In all, the three said they just want some closure as they work to raise an additional $1,000 as part of a GoFundMe to help hire a private investigator.
“Answers is like the first priority. I just want peace,” Sturm said, “And I want his name to be remembered with all that he's done while he was here, rather than you know, why, and how he passed away, because it's almost like it's a tainted name. Now, you know, when people think of him, they're like, 'Oh, he's that poor boy, that there's a mysterious case open on his death.' We'll do everything we can to make the best of his life that he and the time that he had here, and also get answers to finally put his name at rest. He's not just this story.”
Sheila summed it up like this:
“We need to know what happened. To move forward, I think just what happened, that just that looming, like always questioning. If we could get any answers would be great.”
