The two sons of a woman murdered in 2017 gave their mother’s killer the beating he deserved after he smiled at them during his sentencing hearing on Thursday.
Anthony Dees, 30, and Jerome Stewart Jr., 23, were charged with assault and contempt of court after running through police officers and jumping over tables in a Youngstown, Ohio, courtroom to knock the smile off of the face of Dale Williams, 62, the man who killed their mother, Elizabeth Tammy Pledger-Stewart in 2017.
According to WKBN, “Williams was accused of running Elizabeth Pledger-Stewart’s car off the road in June 2017, causing her to crash along a busy stretch of Market Street in Youngstown. Prosecutors say he then shot and killed her on the sidewalk, all during the morning rush.”
Youngstown police said that Williams shared in detail how he meticulously planned to murder Pledger-Stewart, who was his ex-girlfriend, down to how he had to wait in the perfect spot to run her off the road.
“That was my mama,” Stewart said after he was tackled by police, tased, and handcuffed on the ground, hands behind his back. “She took care of me, bro, when nobody else did.”
See video below:
The brothers, who are being held in the Mahoning County Jail, are now scheduled to appear in court on Monday after their Friday arraignment was postponed due to a bomb threat being called into the courthouse, WKBN.com reports.
Williams, who had to be transported to the hospital—not the morgue—is also scheduled to be sentenced on Monday.
Kristy Johnson, Dees’ and Stewart’s sister, spearheaded a GoFundMe campaign for her brothers, writing in part:
Since my mothers murder our little family of 5 has been broken in ways I’m sure you can only imagine because instead of it being 5 of us it’s only now 4. Our mom was our best friend. Our mom was all we had and now we are left to feel like we have nothing for the rest of our lives. Our mother was our world and not a lot of people can say they feel that way about their mom.
…Some days you just want to give up. It has you crying all throughout the day because all you think about is what could we have done to save her. How could we have found a way to protect her so that she could still be with us today. To have these emotions run through your head every single day for two years is mentally tiring and exhausting. So to have the person that took her life make it his all to stare you down and grin as if what he did was okay made my brothers snap. My brothers aren’t like that…We’re just a broken family that’s hurt & we are going to be hurt and broken for the rest of our lives.
According to a 2017 report, the Status of Black Women in the United States, from the Institute of Women’s Policy Research, more than 40% of Black women experience intimate partner violence during their lifetimes compared to 31.5% of all women. Additionally, Black women are two and a half times more likely to be murdered by men than their white counterparts, with more than 90% of them knowing their killers.
The average age for Black female homicide victims was 35, compared to 40 for all women.
Click here to donate to the Pledger-Stewart family.
