Alabama man charged with machine gun possession was at Tuskegee shooting, complaint says
TUSKEGEE, Ala. (AP) — A man charged in federal court with illegally possessing a machine gun was driving in a crowd at Tuskegee University when gunfire was seen coming from the car in a shooting that left one dead and dozens wounded, according to court documents.
Jeremiah Williams, 20, was arrested on Thursday and faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun. Williams was charged after months of investigation unrelated to the shooting at Tuskegee, but court documents related to his arrest place him at the school on the night of the shooting and reveal new details about the chaotic and fatal homecoming party that rocked the small campus in early November.
Jaquez Myrick, 25, was arrested on the night of the shooting, after he was found at the university with a Glock pistol that had a machine gun conversion device. Neither Myrick nor Williams are accused of shooting anyone. It is still unclear who was responsible for the death of 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, of Troy, Alabama, who the coroner said was not a student at Tuskegee.
Lawyers for Williams and Myrick did not respond to requests for comment.
Law enforcement agencies started investigating Williams over the summer after a search warrant revealed Williams and another man repeatedly discussed the manufacturing and distributing of machine gun conversion devises over text messages, according to a complaint written by a special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In late September, machine gun conversion devises and a 3D printer that appeared to be used to manufacture the devices were seized from the man’s home in Montgomery.
On Thursday a federal search warrant of Williams’ residence in Montgomery yielded an “AR type firearm” that had indications that it was previously equipped with a machine gun conversion device, the complaint said.
Before he was arrested, Williams posted photos and videos online of himself driving a white Dodge Charger at Tuskegee around the time of the shooting, the complaint said. Court documents describe at least one video that appears to show the car moving through the crowd while gun shots can be heard. The complaint did not specify whether the gunshots appear to be coming from Williams’ car.
Williams captioned the video “Thank god we was okay,” according to the complaint.
A witness described the first shots coming from a car that Williams was driving, the complaint said. It is unclear what exactly prompted the gunfire, but a witness said the gunshots “appeared to be an attempt to clear a path” so the vehicle could get through the crowd of the party.
The complaint did not specify who specifically was firing a weapon from Williams’ car.
Williams denies firing his weapon on the night of the shooting. When asked if passengers in his vehicle fired their weapons, Williams said he couldn’t have known “because he was watching where he was driving,” the complaint said.
Guns with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that left four dead at a 16-year-old’s birthday party in Alabama last year and another that left six people dead at a bar district in Sacramento, California.
“It takes two or three seconds to put in some of these devices into a firearm to make that firearm into a machine gun instantly,” Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in AP’s report on the weapons earlier this year.
Following the shooting, Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark A. Brown canceled classes and announced new security measures for the campus, including additional campus safety officers, new cameras and permanent metal detectors. Brown also replaced the head of security on the campus.
“It is our responsibility to secure the campus, and we move on so that our students can successfully complete what they came here for: an education,” Brown said at a news conference on Thursday.