John Jefferson
Inset left to right: Heather Williams (provided by family) and Tyrell Siermons (Fayetteville Police Department). Background: The area in Fayetteville, N.C., where Williams was found dead (Google Maps).
A North Carolina man is behind bars and charged with killing a young woman who went missing earlier this month.
Tyrell Siermons, 30, stands accused of one count of murder in the first degree, according to the Fayetteville Police Department.
Heather Williams, 25, was last seen alive on Jan. 4, in Ring camera footage that showed her leaving home in a light-colored car.
On Jan. 10, the victim’s deceased body was found in a wooded area adjacent to a clearing located near the corner of Newark Avenue and State Avenue in the northwestern part of the city.
On Thursday, Siermons was arrested and charged in connection with the woman’s murder, police said in a terse press release.
Details about the development or broader investigation are presently scarce. Detectives worked with the department’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Team to make the arrest, according to the release.
Some details, however, are being filled in by the victim’s family.
The victim’s sister recently spoke with Raleigh-based NBC affiliate WRAL about an interaction with a person answering a number on Williams’ phone log — a number allegedly called, or which called her, the night she last left her residence.
“He said he met her on Facebook, either through Facebook Dating or Messenger, he couldn’t remember which,” Mary Williams said in an interview. “He said he hung out with her one night, but he wasn’t sure if it was Saturday night.”
In earlier comments to the TV station, Mary Williams relayed information about her sister’s life well before the penultimate incidents and final, tragic moments.
Heather Williams survived a car accident in 2015 that left her with cognitive impairment, a limited vocabulary, and a pronounced limp, her sister said. Despite her setbacks, the surviving sister said, her sibling “worked really hard, you know, just having a normal life and do normal things that 25-year-olds do,” according to WRAL.
Investigators were aware of at least some of those issues and concerns when the victim initially went missing.
As Law&Crime previously reported, police said Williams was “considered endangered due to cognitive impairment.”
The victim’s sister said she followed up with the person she contacted and that the person on the other end wrote back to say that he had, in fact, picked her up on the night in question in his car.
“It just makes me angry,” Mary Williams told WRAL. “You’d like to think people wouldn’t do something like this.”
The defendant is currently being detained at the Cumberland County Detention Center without bond.
Law enforcement say the investigation is active and ongoing.
Jamie Frevele contributed to this report.
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