Anthony Williams Jr., a 27-year-old male, was shot in the early hours of June 7, 2015, inside Paul’s Market on Jefferson Street in North Nashville, after what police described as an argument that flared up in the store.
In the version of events that first emerged, the confrontation tightened into a few frantic moments at the counter. Reports said the clerk, Andre Swett, fired multiple times, and that Williams was taken to Vanderbilt Hospital, where he later died.
Investigators began combing through what happened inside the market, including surveillance video, trying to pin down whether the shooting was an act of protection or a crime born from anger and fear.
Swett, identified in initial coverage as the clerk involved, told detectives he shot Williams because he felt threatened and feared for his safety. The case lingered for months before prosecutors took it to a grand jury, and Swett was ultimately indicted on a second-degree murder charge in connection with Williams’s death.
The arrest came in a mundane, almost accidental way: on February 29, 2016, officers stopped Swett during a traffic stop after noticing an expired license plate. A routine check revealed the outstanding indictment, and he was taken into custody and held on a $50,000 bond as the homicide case caught up with him.
In the public accounts available, the story’s last clear footsteps are the indictment and the arrest—an argument in a small market, a man dead at the hospital, and a clerk insisting it was self-defense as he faced a murder charge. Those reports identify Swett as the lone suspect and do not describe any additional suspects or arrests connected to Williams’s killing beyond the clerk himself.
