Besides driving the car used in the Feb. 15 drive-by shooting of Christopher Privett outside Palo Verde High School, Ezekiel Williams egged on the teenager who fired the fatal shot, according to Williams’ arrest report released Thursday.
“Are you gonna do it? You gonna get at them?” Williams is quoted as saying in the report.
The report says Williams also told police “he was aware that Davison had a bad temper.”
Details in the report — some provided through police interviews with Williams and with 16-year-old murder suspect Gerald Q. Davison — reveal for the first time the extent of Williams’ alleged participation in the tragedy that played out as Privett walked home with three friends from Palo Verde.
According to the report, Williams concealed from detectives what happened to the pistol after the shooting.
Williams, the report said, also attempted to obliterate and remove evidence from the Pontiac the teens were in when Privett was shot, and he concealed the location of the suspect from detectives.
Williams is currently booked in the Clark County Detention center on charges of accessory to murder with a deadly weapon and three counts of accessory to attempted murder with a deadly weapon.
The arrest report gives a possible motive for the shooting. Williams told police there was an altercation between Davison and four other youths moments earlier, it says. It does not elaborate.
In the same report, a young woman in the car that carried two males and three females, Mandesha Walker, suggested to police the shooting was in retaliation for someone in Privett’s group throwing “gang signs” at her.
Williams told police he took Davison and Walker to Palo Verde around 1:30 p.m. While at the school, he said he then picked up two other teens, Laquavea Walker and Kandace Cox.
It was an early evening call from Cox’s mother, Linda Cameron, informing police that her daughter and Laquavea Walker were in the Pontiac at the time of the shooting that helped lead detectives to identifications of Davison and Williams and their eventual arrests.
During his first interview with police, according to the arrest report, Williams said Davison told him that he found a .22 caliber Ruger pistol in the back seat and handed the gun to him.
“Williams said he looked at the gun, then handed it back to Davison and told him to put it away,” the report states. “Williams said as he was driving east, Davison, who was seated in the rear left passenger seat, fired several shots.”
That differs markedly from the account of Davison, who in the arrest report is quoted as telling police Williams gave him the weapon and goaded him into shooting.
In a news conference, Williams’ attorney, Brent Bryson, called on the community to wait for all the evidence to come in. Although he hadn’t read the arrest report, he said he doubts authorities know what really happened because of conflicting statements given to police.
Williams told police he drove away from the shooting location and to a parking lot where he asked Davison to give him the gun, the report said. He then hid it behind the center console in the car below the radio.
Williams admitted to police that he wiped down the interior of the left rear passenger seat with bleach to destroy the gunpowder residue, the report said. He also said he took the floor mats out of his car and put them in the trunk while searching for shell casings. He told police he found an expended .22 caliber casing in the back seat, which he discarded.
Though Williams did not tell police what happened to the weapon used in the shooting of Privett, the report said authorities eventually linked him to the weapon through an acquaintance, finding the Ruger at a North Rainbow Boulevard residence.
During a second interview with police, Williams admitted to police he concealed where Davison was hiding out. Davison was found early Saturday morning in a friend’s bedroom in a house near Decatur Boulevard and U.S. Highway 95.
The report does not relate the extent of the relationship between Williams and Davison. Both are former students at Cimarron-Memorial High school, though Davison attended Palo Verde for the first time this year.
Williams has worked at the Review-Journal as a contract employee working maintenance jobs during the summers of 2005, 2006 and 2007. His mother, Caren Jones, oversees security at the Review-Journal.
Williams will be arraigned in Las Vegas Justice Court today.
