Police Brutality / Individual record
Dequan Williams
The Washington Post's Fatal Force database records Dequan Williams in a fatal on-duty police shooting on 2015-10-17 in York, PA. Individual circumstances and legal outcome require case-specific review.
- Record ID
- PB-281
- Incident date
- October 17, 2015
- Outcome
- Fatal
- Location
- York, PA
- Agency
- York Police Department
- Category
- Fatal on-duty police shooting
- Age (reported)
- 28
What happened
Dequan Lynn Williams, 28, was killed by York, Pennsylvania, police on October 17, 2015, after his mother called for help, reporting that her son, who had schizophrenia, had stopped taking medication. Officers found Williams outside holding a knife. An investigation described efforts to order him to drop it and a failed Taser deployment before an officer fired a gun. York County District Attorney Tom Kearney reviewed the circumstances and announced in March 2016 that the officer would not face criminal charges. The encounter raised questions about crisis-intervention tactics, the consequences of Taser failure, and how officers respond to family requests for help during psychiatric emergencies. The prosecutor's decision is a legal outcome, not proof that a different response was impossible.
Investigation & findings
Individual legal and investigative outcome not yet reviewed.
Washington Post Fatal Force v2; 2015–2024
Source record details
- Source incident ID
- 930
- Race code in source
- B
- Race source method
- not_available
- Gender (source)
- male
- Armed status (source)
- knife
- Flee status (source)
- not
- Agency IDs (source)
- 868
Sources & records
- Primary source
- Additional source
- Methodology and national police killings trackingMapping Police Violence · Dataset/methodology
- Fatal Force v2 — fatal on-duty police shootings, 2015–2024The Washington Post · Dataset