Democrat File Photo CARL WILLIAMS, AT the keyboards, was gunned down late Monday night or early Tuesday morning. Monticello Police are investigating the crime, following up on several leads.

Murder in Monticello

By Laura Stabbert
MONTICELLO — It was worse than Janette Williams could have imagined.
She got a call that her son had been shot, only to arrive at the Shore Garden Apartments in Monticello to find he wasn’t just shot.
Her youngest son, 25-year-old Carl Williams, known to friends as City or Kutty, was dead.
Monticello Police say Williams was shot outside the Shore Gardens Apartments sometime in the late hours of Monday night or early hours of Tuesday morning.
The call came into the police station at 12:50 a.m. on Tuesday.
Man gunned down.
Williams’ death has been declared a homicide.
“We are running down some very solid leads,” Police Chief Doug Solomon said Thursday. “We are confident we will have an arrest soon.”
Janette, who’s been secluded in her home since the nightmare began, said tensions are high in Monticello. At a vigil in Carl’s memory, fights broke out, she said.
“When people are just trying to find out what happened to their loved one, things get said,” Janette said.
But she sat with Village Justice Josephine Finn this week, and Janette has faith that the course of violence in Monticello can be changed.
Solomon was hesitant to release much information about the case, noting only that “there’s gang affiliations involved,” and “there’s other factors too.”
Telly Bridges, Williams’ cousin and the owner of B.M.F.TP (Better Mentality for Teens Project), the Monticello music studio gaining a reputation for rescuing rappers and R&B artists from gangs, says make no mistake, he was not in a gang.
“Everyone in my studio has no affiliation or ex-affiliation,” he said. “Carl was never affiliated.”
His parents are likewise mystified that someone could hurt their son, the father of a 31⁄2-year-old and keyboardist who plays at local weddings and belongs to Bethlehem Temple Church.
“He was a comedian, he liked to make everyone laugh,” Janette said of her son. “He was a class act, or he tried to be, and pretty much everybody liked him.”
Her son wasn’t an angel, she said, but he didn’t have enemies.
“It really took a lot to even get Carl on edge,” Janette explained. “And even once he was on edge, he wasn’t bad. He was a typical boy.”
Police are still investigating why the lifelong resident was at the Shore Gardens on Monday night. He didn’t live there, although it’s just half a block from the music studio.
He hadn’t worked in several years after an accident at the church that nearly took his life, but music took up much of his time.
His mother bought him a set of drums when he was a little boy, and his grandfather taught him to play. Carl taught himself to play the keyboard, Janette said, building on a natural talent.
“He played by his own ear,” she related.
She has no idea why he was at Shore Gardens, although the story she’s been told is similar to one Bridges shared.
According to Bridges, the story he’s been told is Williams was ambushed.
“He had gotten a call from a friend – maybe not a friend, friends don’t do this – that they needed help, needed some money,” Bridges explained. “He was going to help… that was the last anybody heard of him.”
Emotions are high in the village, but Solomon said his squad is working hard to crack the case. Bridges hopes people will step forward to help them.
“I see Monticello sticking together on this one,” he said. “We all want the person caught.
“Everybody’s hurt,” Bridges said. “It’s hard. He was so well liked. He didn’t deserve this.
“We all love him, we all miss him,” Bridges said quietly. “It will never be the same.”
Bridges will be putting out a compilation disc of Williams’ music in coming weeks, the sale of which will help the Williams family pay for his headstone.
For information, call Bridges at 665-6172.