Taking Back the Group - Store owner heard call for Lockheed Shooting on his Scanner
 

Am I Bill? You decide.

http://www.clarionledger.com/news/0307/09/m01a.html

Some shocked; others not surprised


Williams threatened to kill black workers five years ago, co-worker says
By Clay Harden


VIMVILLE - Frances Rawson remembered Doug Williams fondly at Poisso's Country Store on Tuesday.


The Clarion-Ledger

Street preacher or an avowed racist? Shooter Doug Williams was both, according to those who knew him.


"He was just a great guy," said Rawson, 78, whose daughter, Shirley Price, dated Williams. "He loved to hunt and fish and loved
life. If he couldn't help you, he would not harm you."

But law enforcement officials say Williams, 48, killed five and wounded nine others before committing suicide on the job at the
Lockheed Martin plant near Meridian on Tuesday morning.

Fellow employee Booker Steverson, 50, saw another side of Williams. He said he believed Williams was a racist.

Less than a month ago, Williams chose to go home rather than remove a head covering resembling a Ku Klux Klan hood, Steverson said.
He noted four employees Williams killed were black.

"One of the white guys he shot, I think he just didn't like him," Steverson said. "Really, he was shooting black people. I think the
white folks just got in the way."

Thomas Willis and Lanette McCall, among the black employees killed, had gone to management about Williams, Steverson said.

Neither Lauderdale County Sheriff Billy Sollie nor plant officials would say whether they believed the shootings were racially
motivated. Williams had no criminal record, officials said.

Steverson, who is black, said Williams threatened to kill a half dozen black employees five years ago, after getting into an
argument with a black employee over interracial dating.

"If you ask anybody out there, nobody's surprised that this happened," Steverson he said. "A lot of folks might pretend like there
wasn't a problem out there, but I think most of the people who dealt with him felt like eventually he would go off, that this would
happen."

He said Williams did not want to attend required ethics training Tuesday. "He sat there for a while and came back and started
shooting people," said Steverson, who said he ran from the building after hearing shots and seeing Williams with two guns.

Jeffrey Miller, 33, of Meridian said Williams had preached the gospel to black children in the mall, including Miller when he was
younger. "You could tell he was strange because of the way he was talking," said Miller, whose father, the Rev. C.J. Miller, was
killed in the shooting.

Jinnell Fox Miller, the victim's wife, said, "He told (black children) he was trying to fill up the black folks' side of heaven
because the white folks' side was full."

But John Poisso, 45, owner of Poisso's Country Store, couldn't believe the news Tuesday about the man who came in his store weekly.
He said he heard about the shooting on his police scanner. "We had to call around to see if it was true."

Todd Kemp, sheriff of Clarke County, where Williams attended Clarkdale High School, was shocked. "He seemed to be a straight-up
guy," said Kemp, who said Williams was a divorced father. "People can fool you sometimes."

Rawson said Williams performed many tasks for her and her husband, Curtis. "He built a front porch on my trailer and put lattice
work around it," Rawson said. "He mowed my daughter's yard. He was going to build a shed, and my husband helped him unload the
lumber for it just the other day."

Williams often took Price out, sometimes fishing or riding dirt bikes, Rawson said. "Can't anybody say anything bad about Doug,"
Rawson said. "This has about got me, I'm telling you. I can't believe it."