Tuskegee, Alabama — According to court filings, a guy charged in federal court with illegally carrying a machine gun was driving through a crowd at Tuskegee University when gunfire was seen coming from the automobile, resulting in one fatality and scores of injuries.
Jeremiah Williams, 20, was detained on Thursday and faces a federal allegation of having a machine gun. Williams was charged following months of unrelated inquiry into the Tuskegee shooting, but court documents related to his arrest show him at the school on the night of the shooting and give new details about the tumultuous and fatal homecoming celebration that rocked the small campus in early November.
Jaquez Myrick, 25, was arrested on the night of the incident after being discovered at the campus carrying a Glock pistol with a machine gun conversion kit. Neither Myrick nor Williams is suspected of shooting anyone. It is still unknown who was responsible for the death of Troy, Alabama, 18-year-old La’Tavion Johnson, who, according to the coroner, was not a Tuskegee student.
Lawyers for Williams and Myrick did not reply to calls for comment.
According to a complaint written by a special agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, law enforcement agencies began investigating Williams over the summer after a search warrant revealed that Williams and another man repeatedly discussed the manufacturing and distribution of machine gun conversion devices via text messages. In late September, machine gun conversion devices and a 3D printer that seemed to be used to build the devices were seized from the man’s Montgomery residence.
According to the complaint, a federal search warrant executed on Thursday at Williams’ Montgomery home resulted in the discovery of a “AR-type firearm” that had previously been modified with a machine gun conversion mechanism.
Williams had uploaded images and videos online depicting himself driving a white Dodge Charger at Tuskegee around the time of the incident, according to the complaint. Court records detail at least one video in which the automobile appears to be traveling through the throng while gunshots are heard. The lawsuit did not say if the bullets appeared to come from Williams’ automobile.
According to the complaint, Williams captioned the video with “Thank God we were okay.”
According to the lawsuit, a witness recounted the first gunfire coming from a car driven by Williams. It is unknown what caused the firing, but a witness stated that the rounds “appeared to be an attempt to clear a path” for the vehicle to pass through the party crowd.
The allegation did not indicate who was shooting a weapon from Williams’ vehicle.
Williams denies using his weapon on the night of the shooting. When questioned if passengers in his vehicle had fired their weapons, Williams claimed he couldn’t have known “because he was watching where he was driving,” according to the lawsuit.
Guns equipped with conversion devices have been used in several mass shootings, including one that killed four people at a 16-year-old’s birthday party in Alabama last year and another that killed six people in a Sacramento bar area.
“It takes two or three seconds to insert some of these devices into a firearm to instantly transform that firearm into a machine gun,” Steve Dettelbach, director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, told the Associated Press earlier this year.
Following the shooting, Tuskegee University President Dr. Mark A. Brown postponed classes and announced enhanced campus security measures, including more campus safety officers, cameras, and permanent metal detectors. Brown also changed the campus’s chief of security.
“It is our responsibility to secure the campus, and we will move forward so that our students can complete what they came here for an education,” Brown said during a press conference on Thursday.
