Sheriff, family confer on probe
Post-Harvey shooting took racial overtones, was poorly investigated, 2 victims complain
In the chaotic days after Hurricane Harvey, A’Vonta Williams was hanging out with his girlfriend’s family as they tried to get back to normal.
On the way to an uncle’s house — where power had been restored — they were ambushed in northeast Harris County by a gunman in a Ford pickup, who fired into the vehicle and struck Williams and his girlfriend’s grandmother.
When officers arrived, however, they seemed more interested in grilling Williams, he said, than rendering aid or finding the shooter.
“The police got there and they were just asking: ‘Who got shot and who I was beefing with? What did I do? Who did I rob?’ ’’ said Williams, a 2015 Klein Collins High School graduate who participated in the school’s law enforcement explorers program. “They just kept asking questions, like, making me feel like I had done something bad.”
On Thursday — after calls for answers from community activists Deric Muhammad and Gerry Monroe — Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez promised the family at their Aldine-area home that his agency would complete the investigation of the shooting.
“If there is someone out there firing a weapon like that, he could have killed everyone in the car,” Gonzalez told the family. “We definitely don’t want him out on the streets.”
Williams said he was not interviewed by the law enforcement agencies that responded to the Aug. 30 shooting. Until Thursday, neither investigators from the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office nor the Harris County Precinct 3
Constable’s office talked to the 21-year-old during his hospitalization or his three months of recovery.
Gonzalez noted that since he took the agency’s helm a year ago, he remains focused on improving the chronic, decades-long problem of understaffed investigation teams.
“We always want our approach to be the most professional and the most accurate,” he said. “Obviously, that doesn’t always happen and for that reason, I apologize that you were treated less than you needed to be treated, especially as somebody who was injured.”
Shooter still at large
Williams said he was riding in a Toyota Camry driven by his girlfriend midafternoon on Aug. 30, with his girlfriend’s grandmother and teen cousin in the back seat.
According to witnesses, a man driving a Ford F-150 fired at the Camry near the Beltway 8 in the vicinity of C.E. King Parkway and Wallisville Road. The vehicle was described as white, silver or gray.
Williams said his girlfriend continued driving on the Beltway before stopping in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Humble. That’s where Precinct 3 constables and Harris County sheriff’s deputies showed up, Williams said. Precinct 3 officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Thomas Gilliland, a Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesman, said in an email Thursday that the incident is under investigation as an aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The girlfriend’s uncle described the shooter as a white male, about 30 years old, wearing a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes.
Williams was hit in both legs and the grandmother, who is in her mid-60s, was struck in the hip. Both were airlifted to Memorial Hermann in the Texas Medical Center.
“Homicide and assault investigators arrived and interviewed family that remained on scene. Investigators provided the family with [a] case number and a business card,” Gilliland wrote. Investigators “made a diligent effort” to contact the grandmother but haven’t had their calls returned, he said.
Williams and his relatives said they reached out to the sheriff’s office on multiple occasions. His sister, Amber Williams, said she visited a substation twice but was told to bring her brother in person for information. When his mother, Kisshima Williams, called, she also was told to bring her son for an interview. She said she could not because he was in a wheelchair and in pain.
Making assumptions
In the days after Harvey came ashore in South Texas on Aug. 25, police and other first responders were overwhelmed with calls. They also were challenged by flooding and other impediments to reach even lifeand-death situations in a timely manner.
Still, the Williams family believes the response to the incident was inadequate.
Williams, an amateur boxer and aspiring state trooper, learned in the explorers program about officers rendering aid. He believes the lack of assistance worsened his wounds, making a return to his job as a security guard or the boxing ring far more difficult. The experience also has soured him on a career in law enforcement.
Kisshima Williams and the activists believe that the deputies and constables simply saw a young black man with bullet wounds and made negative assumptions instead of viewing him as a law-abiding citizen who had been attacked.
“I want justice for my son. He was immediately racially profiled,” Kisshima Williams. “They did not assist my son when he was shot.”
On Thursday, she told the sheriff that she wants to file an official complaint.
Muhammad, a frequent critic of police misconduct who also has worked with police agency leaders, said the incident further fosters distrust between the black community — particularly young black men — and law enforcement. He was joined Thursday at the family’s home by Pastor E.A. Deckard.
They both agreed to work with Gonzalez for positive resolutions.
“Where is the humanity?” Muhammad asked. “They blame us, who put the searchlight on the wrongs that police commit. They say we turn young men like this against law enforcement. We don’t have to. Nobody is doing more to make young black men not want to be police officers than police officers.”