The family of murdered Manhattan mom Lovay Williams exploded with rage after seeing her alleged killer in Manhattan criminal court, cursing him and demanding he be put to death in a chaotic scene Sunday afternoon.
“Your honor, give him the gas chamber!” Williams’ father, NuQuan Williams, bellowed just after 41-year-old Tiliek Thompson was led from the courtroom and back to a holding cell.
Thompson is accused of fatally beating and choking the 27-year-old Williams, who he was dating, in front of her 7-year-old daughter in the murdered mom’s Washington Heights home Sept. 6. He faces murder, assault, strangulation and child endangerment charges.
Williams’ family kept quiet throughout most of his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court, where Judge Linda Capitti ordered him held without bail, but became angry when Thompson’s lawyer suggested he was the one who needed protection from his victim’s kin.
“I have copies of online threats made against my client’s life, made against my client’s family’s life, and I would ask the court to let people know that if you making online threats…that they could be prosecuted,” said defense lawyer Neville “Nod” Mitchell. “I ask the court to admonish whoever might be in here today for putting threats online against not only my client but my client’s children. My client has eight children.”
After he was led back to his cell, the family shouted curses, calling him a “piece of s—” and a “murderer,” and were escorted out of the room by court officers.
Williams’ father continued after the “gas chamber” remark,“You worried about his family? What about my family, you peace of s— a– lawyer?”
“I hate him. I hate him. I hate him from the bottom of my heart because had he not have been a coward, maybe he could have saved her life if he had called 911,” Williams’ mother, Monica Manners, said prior to the arraignment, anxious about seeing the face of her daughter’s alleged killer.
Family members said Williams’ young daughter watched as he beat her mom, put the victim in a bathtub to clean her, then tucked her lifeless body into bed while thinking of how to get away.
The child slept next to her mother, not realizing she was dead, and answered the door at the apartment at W. 156th St. near Amsterdam Ave. around 1:35 p.m. Sept. 6 when police showed up to check on Williams’ well being after a 911 call.”
“The defendant brutally murdered his girlfriend, striking her several times and choking her, then left her body bloody, bruised, and lying in her apartment with her seven-year-old daughter abandoned inside that apartment,” Assistant D.A. Michael Perez said. “Police found the decedent lying on the couch, one eye completely swollen shut, bruising to her neck, blood in her mouth and bruises about her arms and (lower) body.”
Video footage shows Williams and her daughter entering the apartment in the early afternoon of Sept. 5, with no visible injuries, followed by Thompson walking into the apartment hours alter, Assistant D.A. Michael Perez said.
“No other person entered or exited the apartment other than this defendant before the police arrived for that wellness check,” Perez said.
Video showed Thompson exit the building at about 11:30 a.m. Sept. 6, carrying blue bags filled with items, Perez said. He loaded those bags into a white cab and left the scene, then came back 20 minutes later, and left with another set of blue shopping bags, the prosecutor said.
He loaded those items into a silver cab, left, and never came back, “knowing that the (Willams’) body lay inside that apartment with her seven year old daughter left with her mother’s corpse, ”Perez said.
When police searched another address associated with Thompson, they found the bags he used, Perez said.
Thompson pleaded not guilty Sunday.
“I suppose the people have evidence of who might have entered through the windows. I don’t know what they have,” said his lawyer.
Mitchell said his client tried to surrender himself on Wednesday, but police at the 33rd Precinct stationhouse turned him away, then he tried to surrender at that precinct again on Saturday before finally turning himself in at the 32nd Precinct stationhouse.
An NYPD spokesperson said Sunday they don’t have any timeline on Thompson’s earlier attempts to surrender.
The child is staying with Manners now, her grieving grandma said. “All the family, we are going to make sure that that baby is good,” she said. “She’s holding up the best that a 7-year-old that witnessed such a heinous crime could. I’ll just leave that at that.”
“(She) should be worried about school, playing with her friends, laughing, dreaming, and simply being a little girl,” reads a GoFundMe.com page set up by her family. “Instead, she is facing the unimaginable reality of growing up without her mother and living with memories of a traumatic event that she may carry with her for the rest of her life.”
So far, the page has raised $6,800 for “help with her immediate and future needs, including counseling and trauma support, education, living expenses, and other necessities.”
Nicholas Williams / New York Daily News
Friends and family of Lovay Williams are pictured during a balloon release for her in Harlem last week. (Nicholas Williams / New York Daily News)
Williams’ family has known Thompson was suspected since the day of the slaying, posting his name and photos on social media.
Manners said Sunday, though, that his arrest didn’t put her at ease.
“I thought I would get a bit of relief once he was off the streets, but I really don’t feel any relief. I really don’t,” she said. “It’s the same even though he’s off the streets…. Nothing will fill the void of not having my daughter and he’s still here.”
Manners was joined Sunday by other family members, including Williams’ sister, cousin, and aunt.
“She was very attentive to her kid. She loved her daughter. This was a tragedy that happened. She was a great person. Outgoing,” Williams’ sister, Lamia Williams, 22, said Sunday, describing herself as “heartbroken.”
Added her cousin, Lexus Singleton, 34: “I don’t think we’ll ever come back from this. The way that she was brutally murdered in front of her daughter, that’s just insane and it’s very scary how someone can do that.”
Singleton said she considered Williams like a close sibling.
“We will get justice. We’re going to be here every court date. We’re going to fight this,” she said. “We’re going to be a voice for my cousin.”
And her aunt, Missy Wright, 49, described how she helped pick out Williams’ first outfit as a baby, and will now have to help pick the outfit for her funeral.
“I’m numb inside, but I feel a relief for her mom and dad where they can continue the funeral arrangements with not having to look over their shoulder,” Wright said. “If I see him, what would happen?”
Singleton bristled at Mitchell’s remarks about online threats.
“It’s just very frustrating. His lawyer trying to make him like he was an angel and that was a slap in the face to the family,” Singleton said. “He’s talking about we threatening him! He killed my sister in front of her daughter!… This lawyer wants him to get protective custody, psych evaluation, legal services to an animal? Absolutely not!”
The defense attorney told The News that he warned Thompson’s family members to skip the arraignment.
“I said, ‘Don’t come because I didn’t know who would be here.’ And this is not good,” he said. “But at the same time, with me saying it’s not good, I understand the anger. She’s not coming back.”
— With Nicholas Williams
