Federal prosecutor's ex-wife charged with attempted murder
A federal prosecutor says he was standing on his ex-wife’s front porch Friday expecting to pick up the couple’s 5-year-old daughter when Alexis Touchton Williams reached for a gun on a table at the side of the front door, crouched down into a shooting stance and aimed at his chest.
“I realized she was going to kill me,” Frank Williams, 53, later told Florida authorities, according to an Alachua County sheriff’s office report. Williams jumped aside, shouted for help and ran away in a zigzag pattern, the report says. Although his arm was shot, breaking bones, he suffered no life-threatening injury, the Gainesville Sun reports.
His 39-year-old ex-wife, Alexis Touchton Williams, initially told authorities that the assistant U.S. attorney had been intoxicated, threatened to kill her and “came at her.” She also said she had put the gun on the table earlier in the day, the newspaper recounts.
However, Frank Williams said there had been no argument and his hands were in his pockets before the shooting. He said he handed his ex paperwork concerning a joint-interest property and she asked him some questions. He said she then simply looked at him for an “awkward” amount of time before reaching for the black semi-automatic pistol on the table by the door, the Sun article says.
Alexis Williams is charged with attempted murder and being held in lieu of $200,000 bail.
An earlier Gainesville Sun article provides additional details.