[Peace-discuss] NG intvw with Willie Williams

[Brian Dolinar]

 Half brother unaware inmate was mentally ill By Mary
Schenk<http://www.news-gazette.com/news/reporter/mschenk/> Sunday
May 11, 2008

CHAMPAIGN – Willie Williams last saw his younger half brother, Donnell
Clemons, about a month before Clemons got into a shooting spree with
Champaign police in June 2007 that ultimately landed him in a mental
institution for the indefinite future.

Clemons stopped by Williams' Champaign home to say that a mutual friend had
died.

"He was well-groomed. He had good personal hygiene. He always had his hair
cut and clean clothes. By looking at him and seeing him with his own auto –
he had car insurance – you couldn't tell he was homeless by appearance,"
Williams said.

Clemons was also severely mentally ill. But Williams said he didn't know his
47-year-old half brother well enough to realize it at the time.

Williams, 62, was the third of 14 children born to the same woman who had
the children by four different men. Clemons was her 13th child. For the most
part, the children were raised in Chicago.

Clemons moved to Champaign in the late 1980s and lived with Williams a
couple of months. He was here about four years before taking off for
Oklahoma. He returned to the community around 1995, Williams believes.

"He was pretty much a loner. Whenever I did see him, I would invite him
over. He would never come over. I felt like he was intentionally avoiding
socializing with me," Williams said.

On June 7, Williams said, he turned off the TV just before the 10 p.m. news
came on. His son called about 20 minutes later to ask if he had seen the
news. He felt sure the car he saw that was involved in a shootout with
police near West Side Park belonged to Clemons.

"I didn't want to believe it," Williams said.

The next day, Williams and his youngest daughter went to Carle Foundation
Hospital to see Clemons.

"They said his condition was severe. We wanted to know if we should find a
lawyer, a funeral director or a preacher."

*A different person*

Williams said he didn't consider his younger brother different in actions
but said he spun some tall tales.

"Donnell never had a fight in his life. But in his storytelling, he would
glamorize. You didn't know if what he was telling you was true or false. He
had some bizarre stories," Williams said.

To Williams, his brother was different in that he never had sport teams that
he liked to root for. Everyone in the family thought Donnell would marry his
high school sweetheart. But Donnell never asked her. And when she asked him,
he severed the relationship.

After high school, Clemons went in the military but came home after about
six months, Williams said. Clemons said he had gotten out because some
"white girl was liking him and they were talking and communicating and he
was being harassed. He told them he didn't want to continue. That's what he
told me. Whether it was true, I don't know."

He then got a job as a security guard, which Williams said Clemons held for
about 12 or 13 years.

Donnell was not the only one in the family with mental problems.

At least two brothers served in Vietnam. One got a psychiatric discharge and
was later involved, along with another brother, in the murder of an off-duty
police officer in an armed robbery.

One of their sisters also was diagnosed as being bipolar and paranoid
schizophrenic, the same diagnosis a psychiatrist would later offer for
Clemons.

"Rosemary could see (Donnell's) mood swings. Real far to the right and real
far to the left. She takes 21 pills a day, and if she took 20, she would not
be normal," Williams said of his 54-year-old sister.

Williams, a retired union laborer, admitted he had little to no experience
with mental illness when he stepped forward to support his brother after his
June 7 arrest.

He described a jail visit with him in January, about a week before a judge
found him not guilty by reason of insanity of the attempted murders of the
police officers.

"He started talking about a Christmas card he had gotten from Eugene
(another brother) and how the wording was beautiful. He went on for four to
five minutes about it. Then he asked me, what did I think would happen in
court.

"I told him, 'Listen. If you believe in God, pray. God will forgive you, but
man will not.' I saw the change take place. The other person came out of
him, not just his voice but his whole facial structure. This fear kicked
him. This is when I really realized that he had a couple personalities he
was dealing with and what these doctors are saying was true," Williams said.

Williams said in an earlier hospital visit with his brother, Clemons told
him – with police officers in the room – that the officers had tried to kill
him. Clemons was hit with several bullets.

"He said he didn't shoot first. He didn't understand why Champaign police
tried to kill him. He said he wouldn't be alive if he didn't have the
pistol. I didn't even nod. I think I was just dumbfounded. I didn't know
what to say. I was lost. I didn't even want to be involved," he said.

Williams said his children persuaded him otherwise.

"If not for Isaac and Alicia, I would have probably copped out. They said,
'Dad. That's your brother. You got to be there for him. It doesn't reflect
on you,'" he said.

*Avoidable situation?*

While Williams said he doesn't believe the police were out to get his
brother, he wonders if the situation couldn't have been handled differently.

He said authorities were aware of the April 1997 incident in which Clemons
took a gun to the Champaign County Courthouse just days after it had been
firebombed by another mentally ill man.

"The excuse he gave for doing that is that he was a private detective. I
felt like that was a flag right there," Williams said.

And on the morning of the shooting, Williams reminded, the Champaign Police
Department sent the SWAT team to an apartment on State Street where a man
had fired a paint ball from a house at a woman riding her bicycle by.

Why, then, weren't they more cautious in approaching a man threatening
someone with a gun, he wondered.

Champaign Police Chief R.T. Finney said the two situations were completely
different. Police had information that there were other guns in the home on
State Street. And Clemons wasn't being approached as a suspect when he began
firing on the officers.

"It would have been a very different approach had the officers known he was
armed," Finney said.

Williams knows that when it comes to the mentally ill, it's easy to look the
other way.

"As long as they are not bothering anybody, they just go unseen. We'll walk
by them and say, 'Why don't they get a job?' When they do something stupid
or crazy, we look at it," he said.

"It's all our problem. I've paid taxes over half my life. Much of that goes
to stuff I don't agree to. Champaign's got a big building program. They're
pouring millions into concrete monuments, but the weak and the sick among
us, that's somebody else's problem," he said.


-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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