When Wesley Brown kicked a disorderly patron out of a Forestville Applebee’s, the Maryland State Police trooper’s partner wanted to arrest the man.
But the 24-year-old Brown convinced Karl Peoples, a fellow trooper working an off-duty security detail at the restaurant, to give Cyril Williams a break.
Instead of taking advantage of his good fortune, Williams sought revenge. He ran away, got a gun and returned to Applebee’s, where he fatally shot Brown.
“I’m still p—-d off today that I let him go,” Peoples said in court Thursday, as a judge sentenced Williams, 29, to life in prison without the possibility of parole for Brown’s June 2010 death. After the encounter, Peoples said, he had told Brown that he couldn’t always be the good guy and “sometimes you have to do what you have to do.”
Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge Sean Wallace called Williams a man “likely to kill again” and sentenced him to life plus 25 years, the maximum penalty after his February conviction on first-degree murder and firearms charges.
“Trooper Brown would have been well within his authority to lock you up,” Wallace chastised Williams. At the restaurant, authorities say, Williams didn’t pay, urinated at the bar and shoved Peoples.
Prosecutor Tara Harrison asked Wallace to give Williams the stiffest sentence possible.
Brown “showed mercy to this young man,” she said. “And for that, he was killed.”
Williams responded, “No, sir,” when Wallace asked if there was anything he wanted to say. His attorneys only said that Williams maintains his innocence and is planning appeals.
Prosecutors contend that Williams has shown no remorse for the killing and has bragged about it while in jail.
He looked directly at Ebony Norris, Brown’s fiancee, as she described a man who had talked about becoming a trooper since he was a teenager and wanted the young black men in his community to look up to him.
“He gave you a chance,” Norris said to Williams, her voice cracking and hands shaking. “You took his life.”
Williams was sentenced in a crowded courtroom filled with uniformed law enforcement officers. Many exchanged hugs after the hearing.
Brown had only been a trooper for three years; he graduated from the police academy at age 20 but had to wait until he was 21 to be able to carry his weapon and be sworn in. He also started a youth mentoring group.
The night he was killed, Norris said, Brown was trying to make extra money to take the kids on a field trip.
