AccusedHartfordkiller on house arrest falsified Amazon pay stubs to probation officer, records show
Aug. 10—Investigators learned that Williams-Bey was fired from his job at Amazon last November, the warrant said.
After reviewing the pay stubs, the state Department of Labor concluded that Williams-Bey provided the probation officer with fake pay stubs from the time he was terminated in November, the Judicial Branch said Thursday. Officials at the Court Support Services Division of the branch, which oversees probation and pretrial release, were told Thursday the stubs were fake, officials said.
"Moving forward, CSSD will review its policies and procedures to determine how best to prevent this situation from occurring given the ease by which these pay stubs can be fraudulently reproduced," officials said in an email.
A spokesperson for Amazon said Thursday the company is looking to confirm his dates of employment.
Williams-Bey was being monitored by a Judicial Branch probation officer while he was free on bond in connection with several cases, including a 2021 assault. He avoided a previous murder charge for a killing in 2021 when forensic testing showed evidence didn't connect him with the crime, court documents show.
But under the terms of his pretrial release on the other cases, Williams-Bey was under house arrest unless he was working, at a medical appointment or at court, documents showed. He was on a type of electronic monitoring that registered when he was home, but didn't track where he was at any given moment, officials said. He was also required to perform weekly drug testing and weekly face-to-face visits with the probation officer, the reports said.
As part of the process, he had to continually provide the probation officer with verification that he was working when his monitoring unit showed he wasn't home, the reports indicated.
The probation officer supplied court officials with a detailed report of Williams-Bey's activities prior to each time he was to face a judge. Although his arrest warrant for the Aug. 6 murder indicated Williams-Bey was fired last November from his overnight warehouse job, he continued to submit Amazon pay stubs to the probation officer as verification that he was still at the company for months, the probation reports showed.
The last probation report was filed on June 8, about a week before he was to appear in court on the list of cases.
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"Mr. Williams-Bey remains employed at Amazon Warehouse where he works Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays," probation officer Sylma Pagan wrote in the June 8 report. "He provides verification of employment regularly by way of pay stubs."
Williams-Bey also regularly submitted work schedules and pay stubs for a home care services job, the reports showed.
The reports indicated that Williams-Bey for the most part was in compliance with the terms of his release on bond and that he had to provide explanations if his monitoring unit indicated he was not home when he was supposed to be. It is unclear if the probation officer was required by Judicial Branch policy to regularly call the company to confirm his employment.
Two days after Williams-Bey was accused of killing 24-year-old Jordan Phillips on Wethersfield Avenue, Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin called for reforms in the way pretrial defendants are monitored.
"We learned the day of the shooting that he was fired from Amazon back in November, so that's nine months since he held that job and it was nine months when he was out in the community and putting the community at-risk," Bronin said Tuesday during a news conference announcing gun violence initiatives.
His probation officer confirmed to police that Williams-Bey was not home at the time of the shooting, according to an arrest warrant.
Staff writers Matt Knox and Ken Dixon contributed to this story.
