Former football star arrested in Gwinnett

By MIKE MORRIS

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Willie Arthur Williams was one of the nation’s top-rated football recruits when he was signed by the University of Miami in 2004 despite having been arrested nearly a dozen times before graduating from Miami’s Carol City High School.

After spending a college football career bouncing from Miami to West Los Angeles College to tiny Union College in Kentucky, the former Parade All-American is now in the Gwinnett County Jail, arrested last week on burglary and reckless conduct charges.

According to a Gwinnett police incident report, a Suwanee woman told investigators that her nephew, who was visiting from Maryland, had befriended Williams at a sports training facility in Duluth, and had brought Williams to the woman’s home on occasion.

The woman told police that on August 24, she returned home from work and discovered several items missing from the house, including two digital cameras, four iPods, two computers, two video gaming systems, several hundred dollars in cash and several pieces of jewelry.

She told investigators that she believed Williams, 24, might be involved, because he had shown up at her home several days earlier, after he knew her nephew had returned home to Maryland.

Told by the alleged victim that Williams was staying with his girlfriend at an extended stay hotel off I-85, detectives went to the hotel, but Williams wasn’t in his room.

About 8 p.m. last Thursday, the clerk at the Suburban Extended Stay Hotel called investigators to say that Williams was in his room.

“I arrived at the hotel shortly after receiving the phone call and saw a white Mitsubishi with a black male driver fitting the description provided to me leaving the parking lot,” Officer G.M. Gallant wrote in his report.

The driver sped off at a high rate of speed, and Gallant followed the vehicle until it turned into the Friendly Village Mobile Home Park on Breckenridge Boulevard.

“I approached the driver and ordered him to turn off the vehicle and keep his hands on the steering wheel,” Gallant said.

The officer ordered Williams out of the car, and Williams gave the officer consent to search the car.

“A search of the vehicle revealed merchandise matching the description provided to me by [the victim] of her property,” Gallant wrote. The victim then came to the scene and identified the property as hers.

Investigators then searched Williams’ motel room, and found more property believed to belong to the burglary victim.

Williams was arrested, and booked into the Gwinnett County Jail, where he is being held without bond.

The arrest was far from Williams’ first run-in with the law.

His senior year in high school, Williams, who had been arrested 10 times from the age of 14 to the age of 17, went to the University of Florida on a recruiting trip.

Three complaints were filed against Williams during that visit to Gainesville: misdemeanor battery for allegedly punching a man in a nightclub, misdemeanor battery for allegedly hugging a woman against her will and a felony charge of obstructing fire extinguishment for allegedly discharging three fire extinguishers at a hotel.

University of Miami officials later admitted that they failed to properly perform a background check on Williams, but they did not rescind his scholarship offer, even though he was on probation for 2002 burglary charges.

His freshman year at Miami, Williams and defensive back Rashaun Jones escaped serious injury when Williams lost control of his vehicle while driving to join the Hurricanes for Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl preparations in Atlanta.

Williams left Miami in 2006, later playing for West Los Angeles College, University of Louisville and Union College.