On the evening of March 21, 2017, police were called to the 100 block of Kinsley Road in the Sunbury Village neighborhood of Pemberton Township, New Jersey, for a report of shots fired. Upon arrival just before 9 p.m., officers discovered 24-year-old Shaquille Williams inside a vehicle. The young man, a resident of the Browns Mills section of the township, had sustained several gunshot wounds and was pronounced dead at the scene.
The investigation into the male victim's death stretched on for more than a year before a significant break in the case occurred. In the late summer of 2018, authorities arrested Douglas Lewis, then 23, and charged him with the murder of Williams. Investigators and prosecutors determined that the fatal shooting was not a random act of violence.
Instead, they argued that the motive was retaliation, alleging that Williams was killed as payback for having robbed an associate of Lewis.
Following his arrest, Douglas Lewis was held in the Burlington County Jail. The case eventually went to trial, where a jury deliberated for approximately eight hours over two days before finding him guilty of first-degree murder and related weapons offenses in July 2021. In September 2021, a judge sentenced Lewis to a lengthy prison term of 56 years for his role in the killing. Another man, Brandon Clifton, was also charged with conspiring with Lewis to kill Williams and was awaiting trial on similar charges following Lewis's conviction.
