Gainesville woman arrested for May 8 shooting that sent victim to hospital

Staff report

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – Bryana Treynae Williams, 26, was arrested yesterday and charged with shooting into a vehicle after she allegedly shot at her own car and hit a woman who was sitting in the back seat.

At about 9:30 p.m. on Wednesday night, calls were received about shots fired near Sun Bay Apartments (in the 700 block of SW 16th Avenue), and a female victim was dropped off at a local hospital with a gunshot wound a short time later.

Gainesville Police Department Officers who responded to the scene were unable to locate the shooter, but a witness said a woman had gotten out of a car that was stopped in the roadway, and then the car started to drive away and the woman shot twice at the car.

The shooting victim reportedly told officers that she was walking in the area when she saw a car stopped in the road with two people fighting inside. She said she heard a loud noise as the car sped away and realized her arm had been shot. She said a friend dropped her off at Shands after finding her walking in the area. The officer noted that the victim’s account “did not appear to be completely truthful.”

The shooting victim reportedly spoke with her boyfriend, who is in the Alachua County Jail, while she was in the hospital, and officers were able to access a recording of the call. The shooting victim reportedly said she had been in the back seat of a car and had put her address into the driver’s phone so the driver, later identified as Williams, could take her home. She handed the phone to the front seat passenger, the driver’s girlfriend, who started going through the phone and became angry about messages she found. The car stopped in the middle of the road, and the driver jumped out; the front seat passenger jumped into the driver’s seat and drove away, at which point the shooting victim heard a “pop.”

Officers learned that the car registered to Williams matched the description of the car seen by the witness at the scene of the shooting and also the car that dropped the shooting victim off at Shands.

Officers made contact with Williams at her home yesterday and found her sitting in her car in front of the house; officers noticed that there was an apparent bullet hole on the car. Williams reportedly confirmed that the car had been shot the previous night while her girlfriend was driving. The officer asked Williams to get out of the car so it could be processed as evidence, and the officer reported that it looked like Williams put something into her pocket before getting out of the car. As Williams walked toward her home, the officer reported that the grip of a gun could be seen sticking out of her pocket. Williams was detained, and the gun was removed from her pocket. The arrest report notes that Williams was overheard telling a neighbor, “I didn’t do anything wrong… I just shot at my own car.”

Post Miranda, Williams reportedly said she had been driving her car just before the incident, with her girlfriend in the front seat and the shooting victim in the back seat. She said her girlfriend took her phone from the shooting victim and started going through it, and then her girlfriend became upset at finding messages from another woman to Williams and started hitting her in the face and head, so Williams stopped the car.

Williams reportedly said she asked her girlfriend to get out of the car, but she refused, so she got out on the driver’s side with the intention of opening the passenger door for her girlfriend to get out. However, her girlfriend jumped over to the driver’s seat and drove away. Williams reportedly said she pulled out her gun and shot once at the car; she said she was not trying to shoot anyone and only shot at the car so her girlfriend would stop. She said she did not intend to shoot the victim. She reportedly stated that the gun found by the officers at her home was the same one she used to shoot at her car.

Williams successfully completed a deferred prosecution agreement in 2015 for loitering/prowling and resisting an officer without violence. She has a drug conviction in another county from 2018, and in 2021 she was accused of punching another woman in the face after an altercation in a drive-through, but the charges were later dropped. Judge Susan Miller-Jones set bail at $50,000.

Articles about arrests are based on reports from law enforcement agencies. The charges listed are taken from the arrest report and/or court records and are only accusations. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

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