Former San Ysidro High School basketball star Mikey Williams avoided jail time after he was sentenced Monday to one year of probation in connection with a gun incident at his Jamul home last year.
Williams, currently enrolled at the University of Central Florida, attended the San Diego Superior Court sentencing hearing via video conference. During the hearing, Deputy District Attorney George Modlin said Williams had completed his required community service, anger management course and gun safety class as part of his plea agreement from last year.
While Williams had pleaded guilty to two felonies, the deferred judgment reduced his charge for making criminal threats to a misdemeanor and vacated the charge of personal use of a firearm in commission of a crime, Modlin said.
In addition to serving one year of probation — the lowest level of probation that doesn’t require check-ins with a probation officer — Williams agreed to a firearm restriction for 10 years.
“He is a very young man and this was, again, an unfortunate sequence of events that took place,” defense attorney Randy Grossman said following the hearing. “He had never been in trouble with the law before. He’s certainly not been in trouble since then.”
Judge Roderick Shelton told Williams after handing out the sentence that the basketball star was fortunate to have the plea deal in place and wished him good luck in the future.
“I think Judge Shelton just wanted to make sure that he kept his nose clean and that he’s been staying on the right path,” Grossman said. “I think (Williams) is going to make San Diego proud.”
The charges against Williams stemmed from an incident outside the basketball player’s 3,500-square-foot home in Jamul on March 27, 2023. After an argument between Williams and a group of people inside the home, the basketball player allegedly threatened some of the witnesses in the case.
Witnesses testified during the preliminary hearing that Williams went upstairs and retrieved a gun. He then appeared in front of the house while some of the witnesses were trying to leave. Their white Tesla then came under fire, according to testimony.
None of the witnesses testified that they saw Williams fire at the car. Grossman noted his client did not plead guilty to firing a gun but to issuing a threat, and brandishing a firearm was part of that threat.
Williams had originally accepted a scholarship to play at the University of Memphis before the incident. Grossman said his client and family said it would be better to “change chapters” after the case was filed, and Williams made the move to Florida instead.
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