Suspect arrested in fatal shooting of college student on ‘dream trip’ to NYC

A Brooklyn man was arrested Thursday in the fatal shooting of an Indiana University student killed while on a “dream trip” to New York City more than two years ago, police said.

William Freeman, 26, was slapped with two counts of murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the 2020 slaying of 20-year-old Ethan Williams, who was sitting on the stoop of his Bushwick Airbnb when he was struck by a bullet in the chest.

Williams, a college sophomore who had been obsessed with the Big Apple since he saw the movie “Spider-Man” as a child, was with a group of friends from the Midwest at the time.

The deadly shot came from another group about 200 feet away — and was either a stray bullet or a case of mistaken identity, with the shooter possibly believing the Midwesterners were members of a rival gang, sources and cops said then. The gunman dropped his weapon at the scene, according to sources.

Williams’ father, Jason, was driving when a prosecutor with the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office called him and told him to pull over. He said she told him that Freeman was charged and apparently confessed to the crime.

“She immediately led out with the news that they had arrested Ethan’s killer – William Freeman – and have a confession. It’s the first time I had heard a name, even though he had been a suspect for quite a long time,” Jason Williams told The Post Thursday.

“It is difficult to explain how I felt in the next few moments as she explained everything that had occurred in the hours before. I then called my wife and son on a three-way call to tell them the news, and we were all just kind of in a state of shock. It’s not an emotion I have felt before.”

Williams said he was beginning to lose hope that his son’s killer would ever be found and won’t consider justice truly served until there is a conviction.

“For two years now, I have prayed every day, usually multiple times for justice,” he said, adding. “Simply, I prayed that he would, at some point, begin to understand the consequences of his actions and the incredible grief and pain and dashed hopes his violent actions have brought onto so many who knew and loved Ethan, and that he would do the right thing by confessing to his crimes.”

Williams was a student in the film media program in town to film some skateboarding videos at the time of his death. He was remembered as a caring young man who was named to the mayor’s youth leadership council in Indianapolis and considered becoming a professor one day.

As a high schooler, he did missionary work in Rwanda and started an LGBTQ club – he wasn’t gay but he was tired of seeing his classmates getting picked on, Jason Williams previously told The Post.

“It’s hard to express how much he loved everybody,” the dad said in a 2020 interview. “He did not know a stranger.”

Hours before his tragic end, Ethan had bought a sandwich for a homeless man in the city, his father said in a November 2021 essay published in The Post.

“While he loved the architecture and energy of your city, what Ethan wanted to experience most were the people,” Jason Williams wrote then. “Because my son loved people, strangers weren’t strangers; they were future friends. This is why his ambush and murder by a stranger is even more painful for our family.”

His forgiving son “would have embraced his would-be killer, asked his name and hung out on those same steps with him swapping stories deep into the night” if given the chance, his father said then. 

Jason Williams said Thursday while he hopes the suspect serves a “very, very long” prison sentence, he wants the alleged killer to become “the kind of man that he could be instead of remaining the man he now is.”