Longtime NBA team executive’s son slain in Pittsburgh

A son of a longtime NBA team executive was shot to death in Pittsburgh last week.

Richard Williams, 35, died inside a car in Homewood South during a meeting May 22 that police describe as a drug deal. A 26-year-old Mount Oliver woman was charged with his slaying Thursday but had not been arrested. Police also were searching for a second suspect.

Williams was an adopted son of Pat Williams, senior vice president of the Orlando Magic and a longtime NBA executive who has served as a general manger for teams in Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia and

Orlando during a nearly 50-year career in the league. He was named one of the 50 most influential people in NBA history in 1996.

Mr. Williams, 77, has 19 children; 14 were adopted.

RichardWilliams, called “Richie” by most, was adopted from Brazil at the age of 11, Mr. Williams said Friday. He’d lived a rough life, abandoned on the streets, and spoke only Portuguese when he arrived in Florida, Mr. Williams said.

“He was a good kid with a good heart who had some real struggles with life,” Mr. Williams said. “We pray God will rest his soul. His battle is over.”

As a child, Williams was active in sports — he once hit two home runs in a Little League game and celebrated at a Haagen Dazs — but he struggled academically in school.

His parents sent him to private schools that “specialized in young men who neededhelp,” Mr. Williams said, and Williams graduated with a high school diploma from such a school in New Jersey. He then moved to Pittsburgh to attend culinary school, Mr. Williams said.

“That seemed to be his great interest,” he said.

But Williams also racked up a lengthy criminal history in Allegheny County. In 2003, he pleaded guilty to holding a woman at knifepoint for forcible oral sex during a burglary in Brighton Heights.

He was later convicted in three cases of failing to comply with the requirements of the sex offender registry, and in 2016 pleaded guilty to corruption of a minor for having inappropriate contact with a teenager at the restaurant where he worked.

Williams had an 8month-old son and lived in Donora with his partner, Maria Wilkerson, 36. She said she knew about his past convictions but said he was a loving, attentive father whom she never felt unsafe around.

“He didn’t do any drugs,” she said Friday. “So this is astonishing to me. He didn’t drink, smoke or do anything.”

Mr. Williams said he spoke with his son a couple of weeks ago and could tell he was proud to be a new dad.

“I was hopeful that this could get him settled down,” he said.

As police search for the killer, each of Williams’ 18 siblings is grieving in his or her own way, Mr. Williams said.

“It’s tough to lose a sibling,” he said. “And it’s tough to lose a son.”

Investigators have charged a woman with homicide in Williams’ death — even though a video of the shooting shows an armed man running away from the crime scene.

Security cameras in the 7800 block of Kelly Street captured the shooting, according to a criminal complaint filed by Pittsburgh police Detective Michael Flynn.

The footage shows a struggle between Williams and someone in the back seat of his car at 7:15 p.m. Then, Williams’ body jerks forward, suggesting he had been shot. The car accelerates forward.

A man jumps out of the still-moving car, holding what appears to be a firearm, Detective Flynn wrote in the complaint.

Detectives were still looking for the man, police said Friday. On Thursday, they charged Lavasha Johnson, 26, with homicide and tampering with evidence in the slaying.

Investigators found Williams’ phone in his car and discovered that he had texted Ms. Johnson about buying marijuana that night.

At the same time that Ms. Johnson was texting Williams to set up the drug deal, cell phone records show she was also texting another cell number belonging to an unidentified person, according to the criminal complaint.

It appears from the criminal complaint that investigators know only the timing of those text messages, not the content. Ms. Johnson texted the unidentified person 39 times in the hour before Williams was shot. She texted Williams 41 times in that period.

Cell records appear to show that Ms. Johnson got into Williams’ car around 7:05 p.m. and the pair drove to the 7800 block of Kelly Street, according to the complaint.

Ms. Johnson called the unidentified person at 7:14 p.m. Williams was shot at 7:15 p.m. and was pronounced dead at 7:22 p.m.

Shelly Bradbury: 412263-1999, sbradbury@postgazette.com or follow on Twitter @ShellyBradbury.