The 80-year-old grandmother of Willie Clark can’t stop worrying since she got the call that he was locked up and being questioned in connection with the killing of Denver Broncos player Darrent Williams.
“I know he do a lot of things, but I don’t think he’d take nobody’s life,” Susie Johnson said at her kitchen table Saturday. “I am praying to the Lord that he ain’t the one.”
Early New Year’s Day, Williams, a 24-year-old cornerback, was killed during a drive-by shooting after he left the Shelter nightclub with friends in a Hummer limousine.
A Denver police source said three suspected gang members were being sought for questioning in the case.
Clark, 23, was arrested late Friday on a parole violation, with police spokesman Sonny Jackson saying that his “name surfaced in our investigation as someone we wanted to talk to.” Jackson described Clark as a “person of interest” in the case but did not call him a suspect.
No additional arrests had been made as of late Saturday, said Virginia Quiñones, a police spokeswoman.
Johnson said she raised Clark from the time he was 2 months old. Clark’s mother was a teenager when she gave birth and decided to let her mother take care of him, Johnson said.
“She wrapped him up in a blanket and brought him to me,” Johnson said.
When Clark was 12, he was robbed of his bicycle at gunpoint by thugs, Johnson said. The men shot at two of his friends, picked Clark up off the street, hit him on the head with a gun and threw Clark and his bike in the trunk of a car, according to a 1995 Denver Post article.
The men drove Clark around Montbello for several blocks. Someone called his grandmother when they saw him thrown back out on the street. Dazed, he was treated at a hospital for a mild concussion.
Clark did not complete the 12th grade. He held odd jobs over the years, such as delivering newspapers and cutting lawns, Johnson said.
She said her grandson used to run with gangs, “but he got out of that. He’s not a bad person around me.”
Police have not said whether they believe Clark still is involved in gangs.
He has a criminal record dating back to 1999, when he was 16. In June, he was convicted for the second time for vehicle theft and sentenced to a year in prison. He was on parole when he was arrested.
Johnson said that Clark has talked to her about being in jail.
“He said, ‘Grandma, I never want to go back to jail. I’ve been through enough,”‘ she said.
She was surprised when detectives came to her door, asking where her grandson was on New Year’s Eve.
“I told them that I wasn’t going to lie for nobody,” Johnson said. “I told them, ‘He’s in and out. He don’t live here. I don’t know where he be at night.”‘
Clark’s parole officer called her Friday night and told her that her grandson was in custody on a “parole hold” and was under investigation in another crime. The parole officer told Johnson that she would probably see more about it on the news.
Johnson said she has not had a chance to talk to her grandson since then, but he has called her house from jail and talked to other relatives.
She said that Clark told the family to tell her that he didn’t kill anybody.
Johnson said she has never seen her grandson in a white Chevrolet Tahoe, a sport utility vehicle that police suspect was used in the shooting.
A repainted Tahoe similar in description to the vehicle used in the shooting was found Thursday morning on a street in Green Valley Ranch.
The impounded Tahoe is registered to Brian Kenneth Hicks, according to police sources. Hicks, 28, a purported gang member, is being held in jail on charges that he tried to kill two women outside a nightclub in 2005, and on a separate charge of intending to distribute 8.8 pounds of cocaine.
Hicks was behind bars when Williams was killed.
“Police are trying to focus on (Hicks’) inner circle,” said Rev. Leon Kelly, who has a ministry that helps teens leave gangs. “They’re going to try and pressure (Clark). It’s just a matter of time that other things are going to happen.”
Johnson said she doesn’t know who her grandson’s friends are or whether he knows Hicks.
Johnson said she raised 25 grandchildren and still has five living with her in her Denver duplex. She worked two eight-hour shifts cleaning hospital and hotel rooms for most of her life, until she developed blood clots in her legs, she said.
On Saturday, two of her grandchildren sat on a couch in the living room, listening to rap music at high volume. A baby, wrapped in a yellow blanket, lay beside Johnson’s teenage granddaughter.
Another grandchild, Raymond Johnson, 27, is serving a life sentence for the drive-by shooting death of 3-year-old Casson “Biscuit” Evans.
Raymond Johnson, a gang member, was 16 on Dec. 21, 1995, when he fatally shot Casson with a stolen .22-caliber pistol as the child slept in a car outside a Park Hill home, according to reports in The Denver Post. Johnson admitted to police he was shooting at a rival gang member’s house.
Johnson buried her face in her hands as she thought about yet another grandchild in jail. She doesn’t want to believe that Clark could ever hurt anyone.
“I pray a lot,” Johnson said. “I turn it over in God’s hands and let him handle it.”
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
