Everett H. Williams, 49, a Black / African American male, died after a late-night shooting in North Philadelphia on Wednesday, September 8, 2021. Police were called to the 2700 block of North Garnet Street around 10:30 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. after gunfire broke out on the block. When officers arrived, Williams was found lying in the street, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds throughout his body.
Medics rushed him to Temple University Hospital, but he died that night.
The shooting was not limited to Williams. A second victim, reported in local news as Williams’s 43-year-old wife, was also shot and survived. Reports said she was wounded in the hands and listed in stable condition after being taken for medical treatment. The Philadelphia Police case page also noted that the second wounded victim was shot in the right hand and taken to Temple University Hospital. The scene left investigators with physical evidence, including shell casings, a semi-automatic gun, and a Nike sneaker that was marked as evidence.
Early reporting described the suspect as the boyfriend of Williams’s daughter. According to those reports, police believed the boyfriend shot his girlfriend’s parents, killing her father and injuring her mother, before fleeing the scene. At the time, police had not publicly identified him, and investigators had not said what led to the gunfire. Detectives were reportedly checking nearby surveillance cameras as they tried to determine what happened in the moments before the shooting.
For a time, the case remained open with no immediate arrest announced in the days after Williams’s death. Later, the Philadelphia Police Department’s unsolved murders case page marked the case as solved and reported that a suspect was arrested by Philadelphia Police on March 5, 2024. The publicly available case page did not name the arrested suspect, but it stated that the case outcome was pending trial. Based on the available online information, the arrest came roughly two and a half years after Williams was killed, turning a case that began with a fleeing, unidentified suspect into one awaiting court proceedings.
