Alabama Man Was at Deadly Tuskegee Shooting, Complaint Says
An Alabama man charged Thursday with illegally possessing a machine gun was driving in a crowd during the Tuskegee shooting, according to court documents.
Jeremiah Williams, 20, was arrested on Thursday and charged in a federal court after months of investigation unrelated to the shooting at Tuskegee University in early November.
Court documents related to his arrest place him at the school on the night of the shooting that left one dead and dozens wounded.
He is not accused of shooting anyone. It is still unclear who shot 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, of Troy, Alabama, who was not a student at Tuskegee, according to the coroner.
Several other victims, including Tuskegee University students, were injured in the attack.
Lawyers for Williams did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.
Williams posted photos and videos online of himself driving a white Dodge Charger at Tuskegee around the time of the shooting, the complaint said.
In at least one video, the car is shown moving through the crowd while gunshots are heard, court documents describe.
The complaint did not specify where the gunshots were coming from.
Williams captioned the video, “Thank god we was okay,” according to the complaint.
The complaint said that a witness described shots coming from the car.
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 say who specifically was firing a weapon from Williams’ car.
Williams denies firing his weapon on the night of the shooting.
He was 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.
Williams was investigated over the summer after a search warrant showed Williams and another man repeatedly discussed the manufacturing and distributing of machine gun conversion devices over text messages, according to a complaint written by a special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Machine gun conversion devices and a 3D printer that appeared to have been used to manufacture gun conversion devices were seized from the other man’s home in Montgomery in late September.
A federal search warrant of Williams’ home in Montgomery on Thursday yielded an “AR-type firearm” that appeared to have previously been equipped with a machine gun conversion device, the complaint said.
Another man, 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.
Myrick was taken into custody while leaving the scene of the campus shooting.
Myrick faces a federal charge of possession of a machine gun.
Myrick is not accused of shooting anyone. Lawyers for Myrick did not respond to a request for comment from the Associated Press.
After the shooting, Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark A. Brown canceled classes and announced new security measures for the campus.
These included 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.
This article includes reporting from the Associated Press