The day that changed a season — and left lives shattered
The day that changed a season — and left lives shattered
Anton Walkes' girlfriend, Alexis Sims, recounts the frantic phone calls and final moments with the Charlotte FC star; cherishing the memories, trying to make sense of a senseless death
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Nearly eight months after Charlotte FC defender Anton Walkes was killed in a boating accident, his longtime girlfriend recounts the tragedy and how she and their daughter are coping
Alexis Sims and her now 5-year-old daughter, Ayla, at a recent soccer practice. (Photo by Robert Taylor.)
Alexis Sims was pulling into the preschool carpool line in Fort Mill to pick up her 4-year-old daughter when the call came from Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami.
Her phone never rang, but she noticed a missed call. As she scanned the voicemail transcription and saw the words “hospital,” “Antwan,” “Walkers” and ”accident,” her heart began to race.
Voice recognition software had always butchered his name, so she knew exactly who they meant: Anton Walkes, her longtime partner, Charlotte FC soccer player and father to their daughter, Ayla, who would be bounding out to their Audi SUV any minute.
It was almost 4:30 on Jan. 18. Alexis had tried to call Anton just minutes before. But his phone just rang and rang, so she sent a text.
“Hey, I’m on the way to pick up Ayla,” she wrote. “Call me back.”
Just as she was going about her daily routine, a tragedy was unfolding in Miami that would change the course of a season for Charlotte FC, and the lives of Sims and her daughter forever. In a series of interviews with The Charlotte Ledger, Sims shared her recollections of that day publicly for the first time, choosing candor and openness as she tries to make sense of how much can change in an instant.
She had met Anton six years earlier in Atlanta. She was from Memphis, 23, and just out of college. He was 20, an Englishman, and playing for Atlanta United on loan from Tottenham Hotspur. They met on Instagram but joked they would always tell their daughter they met at Starbucks. In a Starbucks is where she let the tears flow as she told her story.
Alexis had spoken to Anton earlier that January morning. It was an off-day from practice for Charlotte FC. The team was spending its first 12 days of the preseason in the warmth of Miami. Anton hadn’t mentioned any plans for the day. Alexis didn’t know he would be going out on a boat on Biscayne Bay with some of his teammates that afternoon. She didn’t know he would be riding a jet ski.
Alexis called the hospital back. There was no answer. So she called Kidist Bisrat, her close friend, who was dating another player, McKinze Gaines, to tell her about the message.
Her phone rang. It was Andre Shinyashiki, Anton’s teammate and close friend. He sounded nervous, she would say later.
“There’s been an accident,” she recalls Shinyashiki saying. “We were all on a boat.”
“Is he OK?” she asked. “Is he talking?”
“Yeah, he’s talking,” was the response.
“Can I speak to him?” she asked.
“No, not right now,” he said. “They just took him to the hospital. I’ll let you know more when I know more.”
She called the hospital again. This time she got through, but she didn’t learn much more than what she’d been told in the voice message. She and Anton weren’t married, so the hospital wouldn’t provide details about his condition.
“Can you find his parents?” the hospital staffer said.
“I’m his only immediate family here,” Alexis responded. “His parents are in London.”
She forwarded their contact information. She drove Ayla home, called her mom about staying the night with Ayla, and started looking up flights to Miami. All the while, she held out hope that maybe it was a broken leg — something that would cost Anton the season. Not his life.
‘I'll be there when you wake up. You just have to wake up’
She got a call from another player’s girlfriend. The team had been told not to go to the hospital, so players were gathering back at the team hotel in Fort Lauderdale. Word was circulating through the team: Walkes was in the ICU.
Alexis called Anton’s mother. By this time, it was close to 5 p.m., so after 10 p.m. in England. She didn’t answer, so Alexis called again. This time she answered.
“I remember her screaming,” said Alexis, who’d gotten through to her before the hospital. “She sounded very scared. She put his dad on the phone, and I explained to him [that] Anton was in the ICU and I needed to fly down there.”
Alexis spent the two-hour flight crying and praying. She wrote Anton a note on her phone: “Dear Anton, I know you don’t know I'm coming, but I’m on my way. And I’ll be there when you wake up. You just have to wake up. …”
A Charlotte FC staffer picked her up at the airport and the two were met at the hospital by a Charlotte FC assistant trainer. The three of them were in a small waiting area for about 45 minutes when a doctor came in. He told Alexis they’d had to resuscitate Anton three times.
“He’s fighting really hard,” Alexis recalls the doctor saying. “He’s really strong. He’s a tough guy.”
That gave her some hope.
Doctors ultimately granted permission for her to visit Anton in the ICU. He was in a large room with a half dozen other patients. His eyes were closed, a sheet pulled up to his chest. His right eye was swollen and black.
“He was still handsome,” Alexis recalls. “He looked like he was just tired, sick.”
The doctor asked if she was Anton’s girlfriend. When she nodded, he said, “He might not make it through the night. You might want to say your goodbyes.”
She was angry and confused. He was only 25 years old. She had just spoken to him that morning. How was this happening?
“Oh,” she said. “Well, he’s breathing.”
“That’s the machine helping him breathe,” the doctor said.
She was scared to touch him. “He looked so fragile,” she recalls. “Because all the machines were connected to him.”
She touched him gently. She told him he would be OK, not knowing what else to say, with so little privacy.
She looked to the assistant trainer and the doctor and said: “You have to call his family. I can’t tell them he’s not going to make it.”
An hour or so later, another doctor came into the room where they were waiting. “We need to do surgery on his chest because he’s losing a lot of blood,” Alexis recalls her saying. “We have to do this if we’re going to try to save his life.”
The doctor told her it would be a couple of hours and to try to rest. She fell asleep crying.
She woke up when the doctor came back through the door. It had been only 40 minutes or so.
“Is he gone?” Alexis said, breaking the silence.
“Yes,” was the response.
Her first thought was Ayla.
Anton Walkes holding his daughter Ayla, with Sims after a Charlotte FC game last season. (Photo courtesy of Charlotte FC.)
Focusing on positive memories
She didn’t tell Ayla about Anton’s death until the morning of the memorial service Charlotte FC held at Bank of America Stadium five days after the accident. She didn’t want to use the word “death.” So she told Ayla her daddy was an angel now, who would be watching over them.
That’s a lot for a 4-year-old to process. Even months later, Ayla periodically asked if they could call Daddy. Her confusion was easy to understand. “It doesn’t feel like he’s gone,” Alexis says. “It just feels like he’s away for work, and it’s just been a really long road trip.”
They were still living in the same townhouse near the Charlotte airport when the family got back from Anton’s funeral in England in March. His closet was still stocked with jerseys, sweatsuits, and Adidas flip-flops adorned in his No. 5.
Alexis still goes to Charlotte FC games when she feels up to it. She’s been to two this season at Bank of America Stadium, including the opener when Anton was honored in a pregame ceremony. She’s been to two on the road, one in Orlando and one in Atlanta on Mother’s Day. She invited several of the Charlotte FC wives and girlfriends to join her in a suite the United set her up in that day.
Alexis risked moments like one she encountered at a club in Atlanta that weekend. When a Tevin Campbell song they used to dance to called “Can We Talk” came on, she rushed to the bathroom in tears.
She used to love making TikTok videos of Anton and their family, and she still finds comfort in making video montages of him to post as they pass milestones and holidays without him. She and Ayla released balloons on Father’s Day at Freedom Park, where they used to like going together.
“It’s better to think about those memories than think about that memory in the hospital in Miami,” she said. “I try to just keep positive memories.”
She hasn’t taken Ayla to a Charlotte FC game yet, even though she keeps asking.
“She's used to seeing him,” Alexis said. “She would always run out on the pitch, and he would chase after her. I didn't want her to assume he would be out there.”
Ayla Walkes at a recent soccer practice. (Photo by Robert Taylor.)
Unanswered questions, and a mix of emotions
Four days after the accident, Alexis and Anton’s parents were invited to the stadium to clean out Anton’s locker. During a meeting there, they were filled in on details from the accident. They were told Anton had been riding on the back of a jet ski — or “personal watercraft,” as the incident report says — with a 31-year-old woman in front of him when they collided with a 46-foot yacht. The woman was uninjured, the incident report says.
The preliminary report said the woman had been driving the jet ski. An amended one said Anton was operating the jet ski from a rear seat, with the passenger in front of him.
When Alexis was told in that meeting there had been a woman on the jet ski, she walked out of the room.
“I struggle with that every day,” she says. “We had issues in the past. But knowing the space that I thought we were in, I was surprised to know there was a girl on the jet ski.”
Alexis said they had talked recently about finally getting married and having more kids. He was encouraging her to pursue a career. His friends have tried to assure her that Anton was just having a good time that day, that it was nothing serious.
She found a video on Anton’s phone that he’d taken that afternoon on the boat, before heading out on the jet ski. He aimed the camera at himself and scanned the scene around him. In the background, Alexis could see several girls, along with some of the players who were single.
But justifications and assurances just turn to anger in moments when Ayla tells her mother she wants a brother. Or when Ayla gets a far-away look watching her friends interact with their fathers. Or when she tells somebody, “I don’t have a dad.”
“I feel robbed,” Alexis said.
She spoke those words matter-of-factly, unlike the way she described the poignant moments from the day he died, tears streaming unchecked down her face.
Alexis said her emotions can fluctuate from one moment to the next, from anger, to guilt about feeling anger, to denial, to confusion. She has stayed in touch with the officer investigating the accident in Miami, and she’s frustrated the investigation is still ongoing. Officials investigating the crash told The Ledger this month that the case remains open, and they have shared no new details since January.
“I just need answers,” Alexis said. “I just need for it to make sense because it does not make sense for me — all that water, all this space, and you don’t see a boat coming your way? Just insane.”
She puts on a good face, though, at least during the day, for Ayla’s sake. She’s still quick to flash her radiant smile.
At night, though, it’s different. “I don’t sleep,” she said. “I just want peace, because nights, I am very, very low.”
Next steps
She’s in therapy for the first time. And she’s trying to move forward. She recently passed her real estate exam, and she’s contemplating a move back to Atlanta. She’s been renting an apartment a few miles away from the townhouse where she and Anton lived, but she would like to buy a house, knowing it makes more sense financially.
She sleeps on his side of the bed now, as a way to feel close to him. Ayla sleeps on hers, though she’s working on getting Ayla to sleep in her own room.
Alexis will spray lavender spray on Ayla’s pillow, something Anton used to do before the two of them snuggled up together. Alexis rotates the pictures of Anton on Ayla’s nightstand and on her bedroom wall.
“I don't want her to forget about him,” Alexis said.
Ayla is in kindergarten now and playing soccer herself.
Alexis is contemplating taking her to the last Charlotte FC game of the season. It’s ironic, perhaps, that it’ll be against the team from Miami. It’s helpful, though, that it’ll be the game against Lionel Messi.
“It’s going to be so busy because it is Messi,” Alexis said. “I want to bring one of her friends from school just so she can have a good time and not focus on ‘We’re at his game.’”
Sims and her daughter, Ayla, wearing No. 5, just like her father did. (Photo by Robert Taylor.)
Up Next: Charlotte FC vs. D.C. United
When/Where: 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Bank of America Stadium, Charlotte.
How to watch: MLS Season Pass on Apple TV. For information on how to sign up for a regular subscription with Apple TV, click here.
How to listen: WFNZ 92.7 FM in English and WOLS 106.1 FM in Spanish.
The upper deck (and $15 seats) are open for a showdown between playoff contenders with a six-point swing at stake. Charlotte FC enters the game in 11th place (31 points) in the Eastern Conference and three points behind ninth place D.C. United (34 points).
Of the eight games remaining this season, four are at home, and this is where Charlotte needs to pick up points if it’s going to make the playoffs. The top nine teams in each conference quality, with the No. 8 and 9 teams playing a one-game wildcard.
Belgian midfielder Brecht Dejaegere is back in practice and expected to be ready to play, after using the international break to recover from a mild hamstring strain he suffered against Orlando. He proved pivotal in the buildup during Charlotte’s 2-1 win over defending MLS champion LAFC on Aug. 26.
Charlotte FC sent out renewal notices to season ticket holders on Friday. The club says prices on all season tickets are staying flat from 2023 to 2024, with the exception of club-level seats, which have increases built into the contracts.
Carroll Walton is a longtime baseball writer with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution now cutting her teeth on soccer and the Charlotte FC just as fans in Charlotte do. She would love to hear from you. E-mail her with questions, suggestions, story ideas and comments!
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