Last Updated: 6:26 p.m.
Bunnell police have charged Jermaine Mandell Williams Sr., 52, with first-degree murder in this morning’s fatal stabbing of his wife, 50-year-old Yolonda Williams, a well-known resident of South Pine Street in the city, after a confrontation with her husband. Jermaine Williams had abused, demeaned and tortured his wife for years.
Yolonda Williams was taken to AdventHealth Hospital in critical condition, where she died.
Two and a half years ago she had told police that her husband had been beating her for 30 years. She was afraid to tell anyone for fear that he would kill her. She was a social worker and had five children.
Jermaine Mandell Williams was taken into custody and cooperated with authorities. Police Chief Dave Brannon described the incident as domestic violence, and said there is no threat to the community. Williams was on probation for a conviction involving an assault on his wife two and a half years ago, when she sought and was granted an injunction against him.
The Flagler County Sheriff’s dispatch center got a call at 8:14 this morning “from what appears to be a relative who was witnessing a man and a woman in an argument, and the man was in the act of stabbing the woman,” Brannon said. “The caller was trying to get him to stop. The witness was talking to dispatch while observing the other man and woman engaged in a fight, and him stabbing in the neck area.”
Brannon, who described the incident within sight of the house at Martin Luther King Boulevard and South Pine Street in late morning, said he was not yet aware how old the male on the phone to 911 was. The caller appears to have been one of the couple’s children. The confrontation took place in the driveway of the house.
“A neighbor from across the street apparently witnessed what was happening and confronted the man who was in the act of stabbing,” the police chief said. That neighbor was Jermaine Williams’s father. “That witness produced a firearm and told the man to stop otherwise they were going to shoot him. He did stop. And then officers and deputies and the fire department responded and found the victim in very critical condition. She was immediately transported. We initially were requesting a helicopter, but apparently her condition was too grave. And they took her directly to Advent Hospital here in South Palm Coast.”
The suspect, who Brannon did not identify when he spoke to a reporter other than referring to the relationship as matrimonial, remained on scene and was taken into custody by our responding officers. He was taken to the Sheriff’s Operations Center nearby, where Bunnell Police detective Jeff Trailer is the lead investigator. The Sheriff’s Office is assisting, including with its crime scene investigator.
Bunnell police issued an updated narrative of the incident in late afternoon Friday. The narrative refers to four witnesses who saw the confrontation in one way or another, describing how they heard screaming or saw the confrontation. One witness told officers he observed Jermaine Williams stabbing Yolonda multiple times and then observed neighbors arrive, telling Williams to stop. “I’m tired of the shit,” the witness heard Jermaine Williams say as the victim laid motionless on the ground.
Nearby video surveillance showed Jermaine Williams outside his house with the victim before the stabbing. He re-entered the residence briefly, returned outside where Yolonda was standing next to a car, and then attacked her by stabbing her multiple times with a kitchen knife with an 8-inch blade and a black handle. According to Bunnell police, Jermaine Williams claims he and Yolonda had been fighting for weeks (she would disagree: he had been abusing her for years) and that he had been sleeping in his truck.
He claimed he’d woken up this morning, went into the home, and told Yolonda he didn’t want to live this way anymore and was making efforts to get back together. He claimed that she was preparing to go to work, that her car wouldn’t start, and that he offered to take her to work, but she said she was calling someone else to take her to work. During the argument, Jermaine claimed, Yolonda taunted him as “Poor Jermaine” and asked him if he wanted her to play him a violin. It is not uncommon for perpetrators of crime, ghastly crimes who have inflicted great suffering on their victims especially, to turn the tables and attempt to make themselves look like the victims while blaming the victim.
Jermaine Williams did precisely that: apparently justifying his act, he told detectives that Yolonda’s words–if she had, in fact, spoken them–” pushed him over the edge,” as Bunnell police described it. He said he reentered the house, picked up the knife then attacked her. He claims to have remembered Yolonda’s statement to him about the violin but not what he did next. He claims to have “blacked out,” signaling the sort of pre-meditated strategy that would help his defense at trial, though such defenses, after lengthy pretrial motions, typically fail, especially if the attacker does not establish a lengthy record of mental illness. Williams is not known to have had such a record. Yolonda ‘s record of his violence toward her over the years is copiously documented.
Bunnell Police Lieutenant Shane Groth charged Williams with one-count of First-degree Premeditated Murder and one count of Violation of Probation, Bunnell Police said. He’s being held without bond at the Flagler County jail.
Two years ago Williams was convicted on charges of domestic battery, false imprisonment and tampering with a witness, and sentenced to 18 months’ house arrest followed by two and a half years on probation.
On Jan. 23, 2022, he had gotten upset that his wife had gotten her nails done. He threatened to smash her fingernails off with a hammer if she did not cut them off. So she cut them. Late that same night he accused her of having an affair–with the father of a child at whose funeral one of the couple’s children had sung earlier in the day. According to Williams’s arrest report, he proceeded to beat his wife for half an hour, punching her in the head, body, and stomach, drug her around the house by the hair, then woke up one of his children, an 11 year old boy, and forced him to watch him beating the child’s mother while calling her vile names and making accusations, and telling the boy that those were consequences for her actions. He then woke up two other children and took their cell phones to prevent them from calling for help.
Yolonda Williams attempted to escape from the garage, where Jermaine picked up a wooden sign and struck her in the side with it. Yolonda was finally able to run to her parents’ house on South Cherry Street as Jermaine ran after her.
A bruised Yolonda told police that he he had threatened to kill her in the past. Jermaine Williams pleaded out the case and was found guilty on two felonies and a misdemeanor on July 19, 2022, when he began serving house arrest. Just two weeks ago, Circuit Judge Terence Perkins signed the order terminating house arrest, as the judge was required to go by law, but Williams was still on probation. Jermaine Williams petitioned the court to end his probation as well. “I’ve completed all terms and conditions with no incidents,” he wrote the court, which had not acted on the motion. Probation will be revoked after today.
In her petition for an injunction, Yolonda Williams had checked off nine of 11 boxes describing the acts she said her husband had previously committed, including threatening to kidnap or harm her children, brandishing weapons against her, physically restraining her from leaving the house or calling police, destroyed property and engaged in other violent acts.
“I really thought he would kill me because he has threatened to do so many times,” she wrote in her petition for the injunction, “which included putting a gun to my head over 10 times in the time of our relationship. He has been beating and terrorizing me since I was 13 or 14. He has punched me, kicked me, spit on me, slapped and choked me, poured hot water on me and made me sleep in wet clothing and is constantly calling me ” the most demeaning names. “He has burned and cut up my clothing, hit me with brooms, mop handles, belts, belt buckles, shoes, and any other thing he can find. He even bit me! I just want my kids and I to be safe. We’re not safe with him in our lives.”
Two months after the court had granted Yolonda’s petition for an injunction against Williams, she asked the court to dismiss the injunction. The court did so.
Her workplace last February posted a letter a client had written about Yolonda to the organization’s Facebook page: “I wish there was an Office Hall of Fame Employee Award because Yolonda would take that trophy home year after year, decade after decade–really there would be no competition! Yolonda’s compassion and willingness to go above and beyond is beyond measurable. Yolonda is not there to just do a job, she is there because her heart directs her there. I have personally worked in a similar role and in all my years have NEVER come across someone with such drive and a true love for what they do. Yolonda’s patience is something we could all learn from. Each time we have been with Yolonda–they walk out with confidence and me with happy tears.”
Yolonda Williams had celebrated her 50th birthday just days ago–on July 24.
