They don't have two parents to come home to. His parents divorced when he was barely 5 years old, and he spent the past 10 years with a single father who was busy holding down full-time work and searching for a career. The senior Williams sold his Maryland home in 1999 and moved with his son to a remote patch of San Bernardino County, where the boy's grandparents live. The scrawny teen-ager made some friends and stayed out of trouble. But when Charles Jeffrey Williams moved to Santee last summer to take a job as a lab technician at the Naval Medical Center at Balboa Park, his son found it difficult adjusting to San Diego County.
Friends say the boy was picked on, made fun of by bigger kids.
He kept in close touch with his Maryland buddies and pledged to return there soon, but in the meantime, he adopted a suspect crew of acquaintances and turned to drugs and alcohol. Such teen-age trauma, however, elicits little sympathy from several Santana High teachers. By most accounts, Williams spent much of his time away from the modest two-bedroom apartment he shared with his father on Magnolia Avenue. Geography teacher Don Bainum thinks that sort of home life does not help. They need to be told, 'No, you can't go there.