A $100,000 bond was set this week for a suspect in a shooting that left the younger brother of a metro Atlanta prosecutor dead earlier this year.
Quataven Williams, 19, was arrested in mid-September on charges of murder and aggravated assault in connection with the killing of 21-year-old Derek Alexander on April 19 in the gated parking lot of an Adamsville apartment complex in southwest Atlanta.
His sister, Deidra Alexander, has been pushing for justice in his case ever since. She has stayed in near-constant contact with the Atlanta police detectives working her brother’s case, has been raising awareness about it on social media and is making a point to attend every court proceeding.
“There’s something about a victim’s family wanting to be present, wanting to be part of all the process, that really says something to the defendant,” she recently told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It’s very much a statement of, like, I’m here, you know, my mom’s here, and I will do backflips while on fire to make sure that you sit in prison for the rest of your life.”
So on Tuesday, when Williams went before Fulton County Superior Court Judge Rachel Krause to ask for a bond, Deidra Alexander was there.
“Judge, I stand before you today not because I want to be in this situation, but because I owe it to my little brother,” she said during the hearing.
She asked that Williams not be released because she and her family are concerned for their safety and the safety of the public, especially with at least one other suspect still at large, she said.
It’s “scarier for the rest of the community that we could have people walking around that just decide one Wednesday to murder someone and carry on with their lives after,” she said.
Nevertheless, because Williams has no criminal history or any other active cases, the judge granted his request for bond with the stipulations that he has no contact with the victim’s family and wears a county-paid ankle monitor with an 8 p.m. curfew. The only exceptions would be for work, church or medical appointments, the order for bond stated.
As of Friday afternoon, Williams had not been released from jail, according to online records.
Atlanta police have not shared many details about what they believe happened the day Derek Alexander was killed, but a video shows three young men walking into the complex on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, where he was sitting in his car.
A few minutes later, he was shot in the neck and leg and died at the scene. It is not clear if the surveillance footage shows the shooting, and police haven’t said if they know why Alexander was at that complex. He lived in Brookhaven and, to his sister’s knowledge, didn’t know anyone who lived in that area.
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