The suspect "aggressively shoved his way through the crowd" toward Amy Acton, Mahoning County Sheriff Jerry Greene told CBS News.
Page A2From§Eachthe noon edition — 9 September 2026
Acton campaign's request to stop filming left only the accused's own video, sparing the accused felony charges.
As it ran on the front
By CHIP
On Sunday at the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Amy Acton, the Democratic candidate for Ohio governor, injuring multiple people — that is not spin, that is the campaign's own account, issued that day by communications director Addie Bullock. It is a serious thing to say happened to a gubernatorial candidate at a fair stop. The man was arrested. Ohioans were right to take that word seriously, and the campaign was right to lean on it in every statement that followed, because that is what you do when you say you were attacked: you say so, and you keep saying so, and you don't need — well, you would think you would not need anything more than your own word for it.…
…(cont) Except somewhere in that Sunday crowd, bystanders with phones out were allegedly asked by the campaign to stop recording. That is an unusual thing for the party that says it was attacked to ask of the witnesses. I do not love the optics of it, I will say that much, but an unusual ask is not proof of anything, and I want to be careful not to read intent into a request that — actually, it is hard not to read intent into a request that leaves you as the only source for your own story.
Which is more or less what happened. By Wednesday the prosecutor had reviewed the evidence — not campaign statements, not secondhand accounts of a lunge, but the only video of the Canfield Fair incident that exists, because the crowd did what it had allegedly been asked. That footage belonged to the accused, shot on the accused's own device, of the entire encounter the campaign had described as a lunge that injured multiple people. It is the reason the felony charges never landed. The accused avoided them entirely, on the strength of the one tape the campaign's own request should have made impossible.
So here is where I am supposed to tell you the tape backs up Dr. Acton's account, that the lunge holds up, that the injuries speak for themselves even where the charges did not. I have looked at what that footage did to this case. It cleared the accused of the exact charges the campaign's language was built to secure. I can defend the statement. I cannot defend the tape.
“They ask the crowd to stop filming, then act stunned when the only surviving tape turns out to be the accused's own — and it clears the accused of felonies. That's not bad luck; that's a story that only worked as long as nobody else's camera was rolling, and now it's the campaign explaining itself, not the man who was arrested.”
“Look, the campaign's account is the campaign's account — an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people, that's serious, Ohioans deserve to take it seriously, it's — the prosecutor watched the only video that exists and the accused walked without felonies, so, yeah. Maybe not that seriously.”
The receipts
Patrick Havas' own video is the only footage of the Canfield Fair incident after Amy Acton's camp allegedly asked people to stop recording it.
An armed individual attacked Ohio Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton and injured multiple people at a campaign event on Sunday near Youngstown, according to her campaign. “While attending the Canfield Fair, an armed individual lunged at Dr. Acton, injuring multiple people,”
Amy Acton's campaign says the Ohio governor candidate was targeted by an armed individual at the Canfield Fair as political violence fears mount.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.