Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today that Charles Williams, 35, has been indicted by a grand jury and arraigned in Queens Supreme Court on murder and other charges for the 2018 shooting death of a 27-year-old Jamaica, Queens father.

District Attorney Katz said, “What began as a night of bowling turned to deadly crime after the defendant allegedly murdered the victim and abandoned his body in a parking lot. The defendant traveled thousands of miles to elude capture but is now in custody facing justice for his alleged crime.”

Williams was arraigned this afternoon before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth C. Holder on four-count indictment charging him with murder in the second degree, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and tampering with physical evidence. Justice Holder remanded the defendant and ordered him to return to Court on August 2, 2021. If convicted, Williams faces up to 25 years-to-life in prison.

According to the charges, on September 30, 2018, the defendant was observed on video surveillance bowling with the victim, Darryl Whitfield at Whitestone Lanes in Queens. Mr. Whitfield and the defendant left the bowling alley together in a gray BMW around 4 a.m. Surveillance cameras tracked the BMW to a local gas station and later to an AutoZone parking lot where Mr. Whitfield’s dead body was later found, with a single gunshot wound to his head, by an employee.

Furthermore, said DA Katz, the defendant allegedly hid the revolver used in this homicide inside the garage of a Queens residence which was recovered the following day with a single round missing.  DNA testing of the firearm was matched to the defendant.

NYPD detectives arrested the defendant in Sacramento, California, on March 26, 2021, and the defendant was extradited to New York on Friday evening.

The investigation was conducted by Detective Shaquan Harvin of the New York City Police Department’s Queens North Homicide Unit with the assistance of Assistant District Attorney Joseph Grasso, of the DA’s Homicide Bureau.

DA Katz would like to thank the Placer County District Attorney’s Office in Roseville, California, for their assistance in this investigation.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Selkowe, of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter J. McCormack III, Senior Deputy Bureau Chief and John W. Kosinski and Karen Ross, Deputy Bureau Chiefs, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.