Last week, a street in Manhattan erupted in chaos in what could have been an instance of street justice if not for the authorities protecting a man in a wheelchair who is suspected of murdering Yazmeen Williams and wrapping her body up in a sleeping bag.
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Trigger warning: discussions of gun violence
According to the New York Times, at least 50 neighbors and family members of 31-year-old Yazmeen Williams swarmed the police officers while they placed the man later identified as 55-year-old Chad Irish on a stretcher to transport him away from an apartment building in the Straus Houses, a public housing development on East 28th Street near Second Avenue.
According to the Times chaos erupted with residents punching him in the face and ripping his shirt while officers and emergency service workers held out their arms to hold the crowd back.
The NY Times:
Some of the loudest screams were from Ms. Williams’s mother, Nicole Williams.
“You killed my daughter! Please kill him!” she cried out.
“She didn’t deserve that,” her mother said. “She was a good daughter. She was my best friend.”
Neighbors said he and Yazmeen Williams were a couple, but the family said they were not familiar with him.
On Friday, just before 5 p.m., officers responded to a report of a suspicious package outside an apartment building on East 27th Street in the Kips Bay neighborhood of Manhattan. When the police arrived, they discovered Ms. Williams’s body wrapped in a sleeping bag next to a pile of trash.
The city’s medical examiner found that Ms. Williams had been shot in the head, and her death was ruled a homicide, the police said.
According to the New York Post, Irish, who has a lengthy rap sheet, and a twin brother with the same name who also has a lengthy rap sheet, has been charged with concealment of a human corpse, criminal possession of a weapon, and menacing, but he hasn’t yet been charged in Williams’ death, although, he is currently the only suspect in her killing. In fact, the menacing and weapons charges against Irish, who has 21 prior convictions, are unrelated to Williams’ case and stem from a prior incident.
As for what does pertain to Williams’ case, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a briefing that investigators have surveillance footage of a man in a wheelchair dragging the body.
“We backtracked that video to the Straus Houses to where our eventual perpetrator, Chad Irish, is removing the package, sleeping bag, from the location in his wheelchair,” Kenny told reporters. “When they take her body out of the sleeping bag a bullet falls out of the back of her head, so we know that she was shot in the head. So, we’re still working the homicide case.”
According to Fox 5, investigators also claim Irish was caught on camera threatening to shoot Williams just days before her body was discovered.
The Times reported that Williams’ aunt, Nisha Ramirez, said her niece graduated from Buffalo State University with a degree in criminal justice and had just started a job with the New York City Housing Authority.
“This is not just somebody that was thrown in the trash. She was a person. She was college-educated. She had a family,” Ramirez said. “Whoever killed her might think she was someone who didn’t have a family, that no one’s going to look out for her. This is where she grew up. Everybody knows her.”
“She was an angel. She was a light,” said her mother, Nicole. “She’s going to live with me forever.”
Williams’ case is exactly why we call for the protection of Black women. May justice be served in her case, and our hearts go out to her family and community in their time of grief.
