A Minneapolis activist who touched the lives of many was shot and killed steps from the front door of his mother’s home. Now, authorities are searching for the person who did it.
According to CBS Minnesota, few leads are available in the death of 33-year-old Tyrone Williams. He left his mother’s home at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 3 and was shot and killed on the porch. Cops are looking for a car seen speeding off following the shooting.
“He helped a lot of people as much as he could,” Rosemary Williams, the victim’s mother, tells the station of her son who was active in causes for human rights. “He was up at the reservation with the natives, fighting over the oil. I heard from their community, it’s just a blessing, the outpouring. I didn’t know he impacted so many people.”
The socially-conscious Williams was active in calls for justice in the police shooting deaths of Jamar Clark and Philando Castile, the former of whom also lived in Minneapolis.
Williams leaves behind four children to whom he passed on his passion for his community.
“He used to give me big hugs every time he walked in the door,” Tyrone’s 10-year-old son Talib Williams says.
“He did a lot of good stuff,” 9-year-old Ade Williams says. “He was brave, he was a hero.”
Talib added that he wants to make his dad “be proud of me, what I’m doing, helping people. That’s stuff that he wants me to do.”
Yet friends, who vow to keep up with the activist’s Black Coalition clothing line until his children are old enough to take over operations, said Williams’ death was not in vain. In fact, a new spirit had emerged to mend the brokenness of north Minneapolis.
“We need to embrace each other, we have to embrace these children, these young men that don’t have love and don’t know how to love, so they hurt themselves and others,” his mother says. “We are not going to allow them to destroy themselves or each other. It’s going to stop.”
