CNN
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An ex-girlfriend of Herschel Walker, the Republican Senate nominee in Georgia, has come forward in The Daily Beast to allege that the former football star was violent and threatening toward her during an incident that took place in 2005.
Cheryl Parsa, a Dallas resident, told the news outlet she had a five-year relationship with Walker from 2004 to 2009. She alleges that in 2005, after she found Walker with another woman, he got angry, and, according to her account, placed his hands on her chest and neck and also swung his fist at her. She told The Daily Beast that she thought he was “going to beat me” and that she fled.
CNN has reached out to Parsa and Walker’s campaign for comment.
Parsa’s account, which she is making for the first time on the record, is just the latest in a string of past allegations made against Walker of violent and threatening behavior that have now resurfaced during his Senate campaign. Some of the allegations have been the basis for attack ads against Walker by Democrats.
CNN reported last year that a Texas woman had told police in 2002 that Walker had threatened and stalked her. Walker has also been accused by his ex-wife and another ex-girlfriend of making threats, and they told authorities that Walker had threatened to shoot them in the head. Walker’s ex-wife, Cindy Grossman, told CNN in a 2008 interview that Walker had held a razor to her throat, and at one point, “he held [a] gun to my temple and said he was going to blow my brains out.”
When faced with past allegations of violence, Walker’s campaign, and Walker himself, have often pointed to his public struggle with mental health. Walker has publicly discussed his diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, which was previously known as multiple personality disorder.
The Daily Beast said it spoke to a person close to Parsa who said Parsa told the person about the incident at the time.
The Daily Beast said Parsa also provided a book-length manuscript detailing her relationship with Walker based on her contemporaneous notes and journal entries, along with cards, business plans, gifts and photos of her and Walker together to corroborate their romantic relationship. The outlet also said it spoke to four people close to Parsa who corroborated the relationship, one of whom the publication described as “one of Walker’s former romantic partners.”
Walker is facing Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate runoff on Tuesday. The race advanced to the runoff after neither candidate got more than 50% of the vote in the November general election.
