05-01-2002, 03:26 PM
Quote:Grand Jury Indicts
Ex-Net Jayson Williams
FLEMINGTON, NJ
Former NBA star Jayson Williams was indicted Wednesday by a grand jury on charges including aggravated and reckless manslaughter in the shooting death of a limo driver at his rural estate.
Williams was also charged in the indictment with hindering apprehension, witness tampering, evidence tampering, fabricating evidence, and aggravated assault. A friend of the former New Jersey Nets star, John Gordnick, was also indicted for hindering apprehension and evidence tampering.
The indictment comes more than two months after Williams, 34, was charged by prosecutors with manslaughter in the Feb. 14 death of limo driver Costas Christofi.
Williams appeared in court on the charges in March. He did not enter a plea and was not required to do so until a grand jury indictment. He remains free on $270,000 bail and could get more than 24 years in prison.
Judy Smith, a spokeswoman for the former New Jersey Nets star, has said Williams will plead innocent “at the appropriate time.”
Prosecutors say Williams was recklessly handling his 12-gauge shotgun and that he and two friends, Kent Culuko and Gordnick, tried to make the shooting look like a suicide.
In a deal with prosecutors last week, Culuko, 29, pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and witnesses and agreed to testify against Williams and Gordnick, 44.
Christofi, 55, was apparently invited on a tour of Williams’ mansion in Alexandria Township after picking up the former NBA All-Star’s friends at a Harlem Globetrotters game in Bethlehem, Pa., prosecutors said.
The 6-foot-10 Williams was once among the NBA’s best rebounders, but leg injuries ended his career and he retired from the Nets in 2000. Since the shooting, he has been suspended from his job as an NBA analyst for NBC.
This should be fun. It took them how fuckin long to indict him? I am just waiting for the day they put the NBA funny man on the stand. His boys are jumping off his ship really fuckin quick and the case should be a slam dunk, but, I think the DA's want a nice, long, humiliating trial on this one. I want to hear him explain the whole "make it look like suicide" angle.