He was the prosecution's star witness in the trial of an accused cop killer but tonight 30-year-old Bruce Willacey is the one behind bars. As we've been reporting, on Tuesday John Earl Young Crawford was acquitted of killing Constable Euwin Armstrong in November of 2004. Crawford walked free after Willacey told
the court he didn't see Crawford shoot Constable Armstrong on the night of November 26th 2004 near the Belcan Bridge. That was inconsistent with what Willacey told police and now the once star witness was today charged with murder. His mother Cynthia Wade says her son's arrest is malicious, spiteful and baseless.
Cynthia Wade, Mother of Accused
"I feel very bad because why wait until now that John Young got freed that they decided to arrest Bruce Willacey. So I think that it is just a malicious charge. I just want everybody to know what's going on because then somebody is going to jail for something they didn't do."
Keith Swift,
Your son had agreed to testify against John Young and your son changed his story. Do you know why he did that?
Cynthia Wade,
"Well first of all he told me that he got death threats, people threatened him about not doing anything concerning the case or else they would kill him and I know for a fact that police beat him to get that statement.
Why is it that the police waited so long from 2004 to 2007 to decide to arrest him for that? Because they don't have any evidence against him anyway because if from the beginning they had evidence, they would have arrested him from then."
Today Willacey was charged with murder and not perjury. He was remanded to the Hattieville Prison until April 20th. So why was he charged? Well Police Press Officer G. Michael Reid says police believed Willacey played a role in the murder. Reid says that Willacey wasn't charged two years ago because he had agreed to cooperate with police. We can only assume that the prosecution's new star witness will be the former accused killer John Earl Young Crawford. He, by the way, cannot be re-arrested for the murder.
