By LYNDSAY MACH, NEWS3 Reporter
GALESBURG, Illinois (NEWS3) — Anthony Walsh, a prisoner at Hill Correctional Center, was just a normal kid when he ended up down the wrong path.
“Before I came to prison, I was a teenager,” Walsh said. “I was 18. I’d have to say my life just veered off a course based on people that I crossed paths with that altered the trajectory of my life, and I was in high school. I had a job, but when I met those people, I got into drugs, and my life kinda fell off course like really quick. And before I could get my life in order and get off the drugs, I ended up in prison. I had like a normal life. Work, my family, even though my family wasn’t perfect and I had a semi-dysfunctional family, everything was kinda just a normal life.”
Walsh was sentenced to 35 years in 1998 for accountability to murder, and he has to serve 100 percent of that time. He was driving a car with gang members when they pulled up on ton opposing gang. A passenger got out and shot and killed one of the opposing gang members.
Walsh started out at the old Joliet prison and has since gone to Stateville. He is now at the Hill Correctional Center in Galesburg, Illinois.
“When I walked into it, it’s like a castle,” he said. “It’s like a medieval times castle, so it was like a real shocker. So in that moment as I was walking to the cell house, I told myself, att first I was like, ‘Ya know, what the hell did I get myself into?’ That was the conversation I had in my mind, and I was talking to God. And I set an intention in that moment, that I was going to do whatever it takes to become the best man that I could be.”
Walsh has since earned his GED, taken several classes, held different jobs around the prison and completed barber college. He even took over teaching a Hebrew studies class. He cuts hair for fellow prisoners as well as staff at the correctional center.
He continues to work to better himself during his remaining time in prison.
