Christian Williams has entered a plea of Guilty to Robbery in 1st Degree and Bribing a Witness.  He was facing sentencing for this crime and for his previous conviction in Superior Court on a charge of Residential Burglary.  This resolution brings to justice the last of several people for a series of crimes involving Stealing, Robbery and Witness Tampering.

It began when Christian Williams was charged in early 2010 with Residential Burglary of a friend’s house.  While out on bond on this charge, Christian met an individual in a car outside the Addy Schoolhouse store under the guise of obtaining some pills.  When the individual produced his wallet to make change, Christian tazed him and took his money and the pills.  Both the driver of the car and the victim of the robbery provided a statement about what happened. As a result of this incident, Christian was charged with Robbery 1st degree.

During pretrial negotiations on these cases, the State offered to let Christian to plead guilty to somewhat lesser charges, but at the last minute he refused to plea and decided to exercise his right to a jury trial. He was tried and convicted on the Residential Burglary case in December.

While waiting for trial on the Robbery charge, Mr. Williams and his girl friend, Chelsea Fantasia, developed a plan to intimidate and bribe the victim in the case.  The plan included Joshua Williams and Jessie Williams, his brothers. It was also learned that Enoch Collins was involved in the Robbery scheme as well.

The evidence was obtained by listening to hours of recorded telephone calls which were made from the jail by Williams to various people.  After the victim turned in a new statement indicating he had been mistaken in his identification of Williams, Detective Mike Gilmore was able to get the victim in the robbery to tell how he had been intimidated and bribed into changing his testimony.

At the end of the day, Joshua and Jessie Williams were charged and convicted in the witness bribing scheme and received prison sentences.  Enoch Collins was also convicted and is serving time in prison.  Christian Williams was sentenced on all his convictions and received a sentence of 129 months in prison.  Part of his plea agreement allowed Ms. Fantasia to plead to one count of Witness Tampering and receive a first offender sentence of local jail time and community custody.