A Brooklyn man was arrested Thursday in the fatal shooting of an Indiana University student killed on a “dream trip” to New York more than two years ago, police said.
William Freeman, 26, was slapped with two counts of murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the killing of 2020 of Ethan Williams, 20, who was sitting on the front porch of his Bushwick Airbnb when he was shot in the chest.
Williams, a college sophomore who had been obsessed with the Big Apple since watching the movie “Spider-Man” as a child, was with a group of friends from the Midwest at the time.
The fatal shot came from another group about 200 feet away – and was either a stray bullet or a case of mistaken identity, with the shooter possibly believing the Midwesterners to be members of a rival gang, sources and cops said at the time. The shooter dropped his gun at the scene, sources said.
Williams’ father, Jason, was driving when a prosecutor from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office called him and told him to pull over. He said she told him Freeman had been charged and apparently confessed to the crime.
“She immediately announced that they had arrested Ethan’s killer – William Freeman – and had a confession. It was the first time I had heard of a name, even though it had been suspect for quite a long time,” Jason Williams told The Post on Thursday.
“It’s hard to explain how I felt in the moments that followed as she explained everything that had happened in the hours before. I then called my wife and son on a three calls to tell them the news, and we were all in shock. It’s not an emotion I’ve felt before.
Williams said he was beginning to lose hope that his son’s killer would ever be found and that he will not consider justice done until there is a conviction.
“For two years now, I pray every day, usually several times for justice,” he said, adding. “Quite simply, I prayed that at some point he would begin to understand the consequences of his actions and the incredible grief and pain and dashed hopes that his violent actions brought to so many people who knew and loved Ethan, and that he would do the right thing by confessing to his crimes.
Williams was a student in the city’s motion picture media program filming skateboarding videos at the time of his death. He is remembered as a caring young man who was appointed to the Indianapolis Mayor’s Youth Leadership Council and considered becoming a teacher one day.
As a high school student, he did missionary work in Rwanda and started an LGBTQ club — he wasn’t gay but was tired of seeing his classmates being bullied, Jason Williams previously told The Post.
“It’s hard to express how much he loved everyone,” the father said in a 2020 interview. “He didn’t know a stranger.”
Hours before his tragic end, Ethan bought a sandwich from a homeless man, his father. said in a November 2021 essay published in La Poste.
“Although he loved the architecture and the energy of your city, what Ethan wanted to experience most was the people,” wrote Jason Williams at the time. “Because my son loved people, strangers weren’t strangers; they were future friends. That’s why his ambush and murder by a stranger is even more painful for our family.
His indulgent son “would have kissed his would-be killer, asked his name and hung out on those same steps with him trading stories late into the night” if given the chance, his father said at the time.
Jason Williams said on Thursday while he hopes the suspect will serve a “very, very long” prison sentence, he wants the alleged killer to become “the kind of man he could be instead of remaining the man that he is now”.
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