R.I.P. Scott....
April 3, 1997: Corrections Officer Scott Williams, 29, is stabbed in the neck and dies from an attack at the federal maximum security prison at Lompoc. Officers Scot Elliot, Marcos Marquez, Mark Stephenson and Scott Leedham are also stabbed and seriously injured. Inmate Roy C. Green, also known as Haneef Bilal, is accused of the attack.
Scott Williams was a family friend... He saved my Step fathers life Scot Elliott... I will never forget Williams... Or his daughters and his widow...
Roy C. Green Will get what he deserves... and I'm gonna be there to watch when it happens...
Scott Williams(center), Kaitlin 5(left), Kallee10 months(right)...
I was there when that picture was taken... 2 weeks before he was killed..
Officer Williams' last moments were caught on a jumpy, time-lapse surveillance videotape, now in possession of the U.S. attorney.
It recorded the attack in a sequence of two-second-delay shots, according to three prison officials who have seen the footage.
They say the tape starts with the killer coming up behind the young guard, who is patting down an inmate in the main corridor near the prison's cafeteria.
As he approaches Officer Williams, the attacker pulls his hands out of his pockets to reveal the two weapons tied to his palms.
In one hand, he has a 10-inch flat blade, which prison sources say had been painstakingly sharpened on a concrete floor. In the other, he has a foot-long metal rod with a harpoon point at one end. The weapons are tied to his hands, presumably so that they will not slip from his grasp, say guards who were there.
Some guards who later watched the images said they instinctively jumped out of their seats and shouted "Scott!" as the inmate is seen coming from behind and thrusting the blade into the officer's neck.
The blow was so hard that it severed the guard's right and left carotid arteries and bruised the far side of his neck.
The attack happened so quickly and unexpectedly, said Officer Mark Stephenson, who was patting down an inmate nearby, that he didn't have time to turn around before he, too, was stabbed from behind.
Then in quick succession the tape shows the inmate turn and stab Officer Marcos Marquez in the nose, puncturing his nasal cavity. He then swings around and plunges one of the knives into Officer Scot Elliot's chest. The blade slipped between Officer Elliot's ribs and punctured his lung.
As the inmate tries to stab Officer Elliot again, Officer Williams, though mortally wounded, staggers to his feet and tries to pull the attacker off, perhaps saving his fellow officer's life.
Officer Marquez also gets to his feet again but is stabbed another time. Then Officer Scott Leedham tackles the inmate and is stabbed in the face as the two fall to the ground.
About a dozen other corrections officers then pile on, pummeling the inmate into submission.
Officer Stephenson says now that he never even saw his attacker that night.
"After I was stabbed I turned to my right and saw Scott against a wall with blood on his shirt, and, as the Marines taught me, I went to his aid," he recalled.
There was little anyone could do. As blood began pooling around him, Officer Williams struggled to breathe.
"The look on his face," said Keith Boley, a former guard at the prison who tried to stop the bleeding. "He knew. He knew. We all knew."
His fellow guards remember that they shouted to Officer Williams: "Don't die on us. Remember your girls." They were cursing at him as he fought to stay conscious.
His last words were of his wife.
"Kristy, Kristy, Kristy," he whispered.
Several guards rushed him to the prison infirmary as he slipped away. He was then taken to the hospital, but within 15 minutes he had bled to death.
Battered by guards when he was wrestled into submission, the alleged killer, Roy C. Green, was taken to a lieutenant's office, where he simply asked, "Are you going to kill me now?" according to statements by prosecutors at a court hearing in October.
The 46-year-old devout Muslim, who also goes by the name Haneef Bilal, had been released from solitary confinement only five hours before the attack, according to court papers filed by federal prosecutors. Neither prosecutors nor prison officials have explained what led to his confinement, but other sources say it was because he either failed a drug test or refused to take one.
In the hours leading up to the stabbing, Mr. Green was seen giving away all his possessions and bidding farewell to other inmates, according to guards and other prison officials, who spoke with the News-Press on condition that their names not be used. The Bureau of Prisons employees said they are legally barred from discussing issues related to specific prisoners.
After seeing their fellow officers bloodied and near death, one former guard said he was surprised no one killed the inmate.
"Emotions were running high," said Mr. Boley. "But they got him (Green) out of there pretty quick."
Mr. Green was put in a van accompanied by three guards and taken to the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. Apart from a year of treatment at a Bureau of Prisons psychiatric facility at Butner, N.C., he has remained there.
He and his family deny that he killed Officer Williams.