Testimony details night Dejuan Williams was killed

MANATEE — Tytiki Washington remembers leaving her daughter before going to work.

The usual rules were in place.

“Stay in the house. Have no one in the house. Don’t be outside when it gets dark,” Washington said after she took the stand in her son’s murder trial Wednesday afternoon after two and a half days of jury selection.

But when she returned home that night Aug. 4, 2009, she saw her 15-year-old daughter Jametrea Washington in tears.

“I saw my baby screaming and hollering,” Washington said.

And she found her 18-year-old son, Dejuan Williams, a star athlete and recent Bayshore High graduate, dying on top of his car where his three friends had placed his body. A single gunshot wound pierced his chest, killing him.

It was dark outside. She didn’t see any blood.

“I thought I felt a pulse. I thought he’ll be OK,” she said, recalling hearing the wails of an ambulance’s siren nearing her home.

A Manatee County Sheriff’s Office deputy didn’t feel a pulse. He began compressions on Williams with Washington giving mouth to mouth on her son after they moved his body to the end of the driveway.

According to testimony, paramedics arrived on the scene and Williams had no pulse. He wasn’t breathing. He was taken to Manatee Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Byron Galloway, now 17, had already fled the scene and dumped the handgun at a friend’s home, according to prosecutors.

He is charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of Williams. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, if convicted.

Galloway was visiting Williams’ younger sister and shot Williams when he was confronted, according to Manatee sheriff deputies.

Jametrea Washington, now 16, Williams’ younger sister, also took the stand.

Jametrea had invited Galloway and his friend over to hang out with her and her friend, Danielle Johnson, despite her mother’s household rule.

The girls had the two boys come over to her house.

She said in court she met Galloway at the Boys & Girls Club when she was about 12 years old. At one point, she considered him a boyfriend. On that day, they were just friends though, she said.

At one point during the visit, Galloway’s phone rang. When he reached for it, the girls saw a handgun.

“That ain’t real,” she said.

But then she touched the gun and the bullets.

“Is it real? I felt it. It was heavy,” she said.

She would later sit with Galloway in the front room and even kiss him when Danielle and the other boy paired off to her room.

Williams, who was playing video games at a friend’s house, grew suspicious when he made a trip home unexpectedly to retrieve a book and saw Galloway and another boy walking down the street. He decided to return later with his three friends.

“My brother kept asking who was in the house,” said Jametrea, as her voice choked with fresh tears. “Danielle and I just looked at each other. We were nervous.”