Man sentenced to 12 years in murder-for-hire plot

Feb. 7—A Georgia man charged in what investigators described as a murder-for-hire plot has pled guilty in the case and was sentenced to more than a decade in prison.

Jamil Williamson, of College Park, Georgia, was sentenced in December to 12 years in prison as part of a plea agreement in connection to the large-scale 2018 "Operation Law & Order" drug investigation.

Williamson pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. A second, more serious charge, of attempted murder was dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

Williamson's plea and sentencing ends a nearly six-year criminal case that was prolonged in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Georgia man's attorney filing numerous motions to get wiretapped conversations inadmissible in court and Williamson's then-pending and separate homicide case out of Georgia.

Williamson's 12-year sentence will run concurrent to his additional conviction in Georgia. In that case, according to Georgia court records, Williamson is serving a 15-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

Williamson, according to court documents and probable cause affidavits, was one of two hitmen — the other being fellow Georgian Sirajuddin Abdul Qadir — sent by Georgian resident Pierre Riley to Kokomo to kill a suspected police informant in Kokomo.

Unbeknownst to them, federal authorities had wiretapped the phones of local drug kingpin Reggie Balentine, Michael O'Bannon and many others and had gotten wind of the plot.

O'Bannon was the victim of a drug robbery, according to police-intercepted cell phone calls, and he held the occupants of the residence that was robbed accountable for the incident.

Riley, Balentine's drug provider in Georgia and O'Bannon's father, then sent two hitmen to Kokomo to kill the person they blamed for the robbery — a confidential informant. The plan had the blessing of Balentine, according to court documents.

Police said Cynthia Foster, Qadir's girlfriend, drove him and Williamson from Georgia to Kokomo.

At one point on March 2, 2018, the group, Qadir, Williamson and O'Bannon, left Kokomo's Quality Inn to stake out the home of the intended target, according to court documents. Unknown to the would-be-killers, police were surveilling the house to keep the target safe.

The suspects left the neighborhood after circling the block numerous times in O'Bannon's car. Police then pulled over the car near the hotel and discovered a loaded magazine in the vehicle.

During a search of all three suspects, police found a room key to the inn and some cash believed to be in exchange for the hit.

Later, Foster gave written consent for police to search the hotel room the out-of-towners were inhabiting, where officers found two semi-automatic handguns and black clothing in a Walmart shopping bag. Surveillance footage from the local Walmart showed Williamson and Qadir buying the clothing earlier that day.

Ultimately, Qadir and Williamson, along with Foster, would be charged locally for their involvement in the planned hit, which authorities believe was in exchange for $10,000.

Foster would later plead guilty to a felony charge of assisting a criminal and was sentenced to just under a year-and-a-half of supervised probation.

Qadir was sentenced in August to 35 years in the Indiana Department of Corrections after being found guilty during a July 2018 bench trial in Howard Superior Court 2 of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder. The conspiracy count was vacated in the sentencing order.

Following his conviction and subsequent failed appeals, Qadir has continued to profess his innocence and ignorance about the murder-for-hire plot, claiming to the internet radio network Black Talk Radio Network that he was vacationing in Kokomo and inadvertently got caught up in the murder-for-hire plot.

His girlfriend, Foster, though, told police Qadir and Williamson were friends, that Qadir asked her to drive to Kokomo with him and Williamson and that they had only booked the hotel for one night.

Tyler Juranovich can be reached at 765-454-8577, by email at tyler.juranovich@kokomotribune.com or on Twitter at @tylerjuranovich.