In 1998, a black criminal named Kenneth Williams kidnapped Dominique Hurd, a cheerleader at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and her friend. After forcing them to get him cash at several ATMs, Williams shot both his victims and drove away in their car. The friend survived, but Hurd did not. Williams was caught and sentenced to life in prison.

Kenneth Williams

But in 1999, Williams escaped from the Arkansas Department of Correction’s Cummins Unit. He had gotten a job in the kitchen unit of the prison and on October 3, hid in the hog slop-filled tank of a garbage truck. When Williams was on the open highway he jumped out of the truck and began wandering around rural Arkansas.

As fate would have it my uncle, Cecil Boren, Jr, was working in his yard when Williams walked onto his property, still in his white prison uniform. My uncle made a dash for his truck where he had a gun. Williams beat him to it and shot my uncle in the head several times with a 22 rifle. He then threw my uncle in a canal behind his house, stole his truck and high tailed it to Missouri. A police chase ensued. Williams wrecked my uncle’s truck by crashing into another vehicle at about 105 MPH, killing the other driver, Michael Greenwood. Williams wasn’t hurt in the collision, but he was caught because of it. When he was arrested at the scene of the wreck, he allegedly told the cops, “Damn. That was some good assed driving I just did!”

Cecil Boren, Jr.

His deadly rampage earned him another conviction — and this time he got the death penalty, not just life in prison. Family members of victims of convicts who are put to death are allowed to watch the execution, and in 2017, when Williams received his lethal injection, me and many of my relatives were there. I thought Williams would merely go to sleep after getting his shot. Instead, he spoke in tongues in a language known only to him and God, or so he said — it was more like shouting incoherently! It was bizarre! After a few minutes, his body convulsed and jerked around, which made many of the people there sick. Honestly, he resembled the girl in The Exorcist. Many were crying after he was pronounced dead. I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing because I experienced total joy that justice was finally done! So much stress was lifted.

But not everyone who lost a family member because of Kenneth Williams felt the same. Kayla Greenwood, Michael Greenwood’s daughter, was a small child when Williams ran into the back of her dad’s car during the high-speed police chase. Miss Greenwood was left without a father because of Williams’ prison break, but even so, she came to Arkansas to petition the governor to halt the execution. She brought Williams many gifts as well, and she and her family bought plane tickets for Williams’ daughter and granddaughter to visit him before his execution.

She had the worst case of “pathological altruism” I have ever seen! She even said that she and Williams’ daughter had a lot in common as they both grew up without a father. The fact that Williams killed her father did not seem to register with her.

Some people might never wake up. But me? I’m still happy to have had a front row seat when Kenneth Williams met his well-deserved end.