‘Haunted’ Jayson Williams can’t drink enough to forgive himself
Former Nets All-Star Jayson Williams killed his limousine driver with an accidental shotgun blast in 2002. To this day, he remains “always haunted by that night.”
“Any time you accidentally take a life of somebody, definitely, sleep deprivation, everything comes. Take something from a man, everything he has and everything he would have, is terrible, and I’m not the victim here,” Williams said on a recent Vice Sports podcast. “It’s just something you can’t get over, and forgiving myself is something you think you can do. It’s much easier said than done, and I go into places where I can’t sleep. Then I started drinking, and I get grouchy and angry, and I get heavy, and I hide, and I’m no good to anybody.”
Williams said he was in the midst of a downward spiral several months ago, “drinking moonshine and losing [his] mind” at a secluded cabin, when Chris Mullin — a fellow New York City native and St. John’s alum — arrived to help pull him out. Williams suggested he may work in some capacity at St. John’s, where Mullin is now the basketball coach.
“I’ll just get into a pattern where I’m self-pity and just a mess to be around and just go hide in a cabin in the woods on 300 acres, and nobody will see me for two, three weeks and just be that selfish,” Williams said. “I don’t know what to do about it but just try and be a better human being every day and help others. That’s why I wanted to be a part of St. John’s University so bad. I needed that.”
Williams pleaded guilty in 2010 to aggravated assault in connection with the death of Costas Christofi, his chauffeur. Before being sentenced, Williams tearfully apologized to the victim’s family: “There’s not a day I wake up and I don’t feel sorry for what I did to Mr. Christofi and that I put you through this.”
After getting out of prison in 2012, Williams still struggled to find solace and turned to alcohol. Now 48, Williams is getting treatment for alcohol issues in Delray Beach, Fla., but admitted he is “one drink away from losing everything.”