Anthony Williams pleaded innocent Friday to first-degree murder while armed and two weapon charges in connection to the fatal shooting of James Edward Booker.
Police found Booker, 23, conscious and suffering from multiple gunshot wounds in the 500 block of Alabama Avenue Southeast on November 5, 2013. When police asked Booker who shot him, he replied, “I don’t know.” He later died at a local hospital.
Video footage shows Williams and two other individuals surrounding Booker in front of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary school, according to charging documents.
In the video, Williams appears to talk to Booker while holding a handgun, documents say.
According to court documents’ description of the video footage, Booker then raised his right hand several times and ran north toward Alabama Avenue. The footage shows the shooter and the two unidentified individuals turn and run opposite of Booker, the documents say.
A witness later told police that the shooter pointed a revolver towards Booker and Booker raised his arm to the shooter to push the gun away. According to documents, the use of the handgun would be consistent with evidence in the case, but no ballistic evidence was found at the scene.
Charging documents say the witness identified the shooter to police as someone it knew from the area. The witness provided a cell phone photo to police of the person it believed to be the shooter, and identified the shooter in a Youtube video.
Detectives later identified Williams as the man in the YouTube video, wearing the same jacket, according to documents.
Williams is scheduled for a status hearing on August 28 at 3:00 p.m. before Judge John Ramsey Johnson.
A copy of the indictment is below:
