The young visitor from Indiana who was killed by a stray bullet in Brooklyn early Saturday would have wanted his shooter to know “he’s already forgiven them,” his devastated dad told The Post.
Ethan Williams, a 20-year-old college student from Indianapolis had been on a “dream trip” to New York and was sitting on a stoop with a group of friends outside their Airbnb in Bushwick when he was shot in the chest around 2:30 a.m.
Police believe he was an unintended target of gunfire in the neighborhood.
“Ethan would have wanted the shooter to know he’s already forgiven them,” his father, Jason Williams, said in a phone interview on Saturday night.
“He would have wanted to be his friend.”
Ethan spent his life trying to give back to others, including by doing missionary work with orphans in Rwanda while in high school, the dad said.
While in high school, Ethan also started an LGBTQ club, though he wasn’t gay, because he was tired of seeing his classmates get bullied, his dad said.
“It’s hard to express how much he loved everybody,” Williams said. “He did not know a stranger.”
As just a third-grader, Ethan stood up for another child being pushed around on their school bus, telling his parent “I don’t like to see other kids marginalized,” his dad recalled.
A sophomore in the film media program Indiana University, Ethan “wanted people’s stories to be told.”
He had a stint on the mayor’s youth council in Indianapolis, where he worked on such issues as poverty and violence, and was considering a career in journalism, Williams said.
“He said people shouldn’t be defined by t... (Read more)
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