Williams v. Commonwealth

• Decision Date: 13 December 2022
• Docket Number: 0018-22-1
• Parties: ELIEJAH KHALID HASAN WILLIAMS v. COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA
• Court: Virginia Court of Appeals

ELIEJAH KHALID HASAN WILLIAMS
v.
COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

No. 0018-22-1

Court of Appeals of Virginia

December 13, 2022

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF NEWPORT NEWS Bryant L. Sugg, Judge

Joshua A. Goff; Goff Voltin, PLLC, on brief, for appellant. Appellant submitting on brief.

William K. Hamilton, Assistant Attorney General, Jason S. Miyares, Attorney General, on brief, for appellee.

Present: Judges Huff, O'Brien and White Argued by videoconference

MEMORANDUM OPINION ^[*]

KIMBERLEY S. WHITE, JUDGE

After a bench trial, the trial court convicted Eliejah Khalid Williams of abducting his minor child, along with several other charges not at issue in this appeal. By final order entered December 31, 2021, the trial court sentenced Williams to fifteen years and seventy-two months' incarceration with twelve years and seventy-two months suspended. On appeal, Williams asserts that the trial evidence was insufficient to convict him of abduction because he was legally justified in taking his daughter away from her mother's custody. We disagree, and therefore affirm his conviction.

I. BACKGROUND

Natalia Bueker testified that Williams is the father of her two daughters, A.W. and N.W. In August 2020, A.W. was four years old and N.W. was two years old. Williams had been living with

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Bueker and the children at her residence in Newport News for approximately two months. Williams spent the previous year living and working in New York. Williams and Bueker had lived together before he went to New York, and she asked him to return to Virginia because she had a heart condition and needed help watching the children. Williams did not maintain contact with Bueker and the children when he first moved to New York but subsequently resumed contact. Bueker and Williams did not have a custody order regarding A.W. and N.W. Bueker testified that she and Williams had agreed that they both "were going to be the parents and work together with these children" and would "coparent and split things, roughly, equally." However, Williams refused to sign the lease on their residence.

On August 5, 2020, Bueker returned from work and stopped outside the residence to say hello to a male neighbor. Williams stepped out of the residence and stated that the neighbor was not allowed to speak with Bueker. Bueker and Williams went inside the house and exchanged "very unpleasant" words. Williams broke an XBox video game console, and Bueker left the house with Williams's PlayStation video game console, intending to take it to the dump. Williams followed her outside and said "some terrible things." After having a "bad feeling," Bueker returned to the residence and, because Williams was "aggravated," shut the door before he entered.

Williams kicked in the front door and choked Bueker in the living room. A.W. and N.W. watched the attack from the upstairs landing and Bueker told them to go to their room. When Williams "smacked [Bueker] really hard" across her face, her vision blurred and she was "on [the] way to blacking out." Williams was cussing and "beyond angry."

After Williams smacked her face, Bueker ran upstairs and told the girls to hide in their room. Bueker shut herself and the girls in the bedroom; Williams kicked that door in, choked Bueker again, held a gun to her face, and cursed at her. Bueker believed that Williams was going to kill her. Williams then went downstairs but told Bueker that he would be back upstairs in five

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minutes and "was going to take the girls with him." When Williams came back upstairs, he attempted to take N.W., but when he could not get her down the stairs, he took A.W. instead.

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