A man accused of beating his girlfriend to death in front of her 7-year-old daughter tried to turn himself in at a New York City police station, but an officer sent him away without so much as a phone call to detectives.
Tiliek Shamel Thompson showed up at the 33rd Precinct stationhouse in Washington Heights at roughly 5 a.m. on Sept. 11, flanked by two cousins. He had been listed as a person of interest in the killing of 27-year-old Lovay Williams, who was found dead five days earlier in her apartment on 156th Street with trauma to her face and neck. Her 7-year-old daughter was in the apartment at the time and was found unharmed.
Thompson walked out of the precinct a free man. The desk officer on duty gave one of the cousins a phone number for the detective squad and sent the group on its way, the New York Post reported. The NYPD itself later acknowledged that officers "dropped the ball."
Thompson did eventually surrender on a subsequent Saturday night and was charged with murder. But the gap between his first attempt and his actual arrest raises a blunt question: what would have happened if he had changed his mind and never came back?
Lawyer Neville Onielle Dexter Mitchell offered one account of the precinct visit. He told the Post that Thompson's cousins made their purpose clear to the officer on duty.
"His two cousins said, 'You're looking for him.'"
Mitchell said the cousins told the officer they were there about Williams' death. The desk officer's response, as Mitchell relayed it, was brief and dismissive:
"I just came back from vacation. Nobody's here."
An NYPD spokeswoman disputed that version after reviewing audio and video of the encounter. She said the cousins never told the officer that police were looking for Thompson. Instead, the officer misunderstood and believed the three visitors were members of the murder victim's family. He mentioned his vacation only to explain that he had been away when Williams was killed, the spokeswoman said.
Either way, the result was the same. The officer handed over a phone number, informed his sergeant, and let a person of interest in a homicide walk back out the door.
Veteran cops who spoke about the incident were not gentle in their assessments. A senior police officer, who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to talk to the media, said the precinct's response fell well short of basic procedure.
"If he went there and said he was there to turn himself in, they should have investigated."
The same officer added that detectives could have been reached by phone even at that hour.
"I'd say you should hold the guy and investigate further. Even if detectives aren't there, you can call them. I'm sure they'd love to take a homicide collar."
Former NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar pointed to a specific resource the precinct ignored: the nightwatch squad, which covers the midnight-to-8 a.m. shift, the detective unit specifically designed for situations that arise in the early morning hours when regular squads are off duty.
"Even if detectives weren't there, they should have notified nightwatch."
Alcazar was direct about what should have happened next.
"You got a homicide suspect turning himself in so you detain him until the squad gets there."
Alcazar did not limit his criticism to the desk officer. He said the failure would ripple up the chain of command at the 33rd Precinct.
"So I'll tell you right now, the supervisor is gonna get jammed up. In fact, the commanding officer is gonna get jammed up, because it's his command."
Whether the NYPD has initiated formal disciplinary proceedings against the desk officer, his sergeant, or the precinct's commanding officer remains unclear. The department's public statements have stopped at the admission that officers "dropped the ball", a phrase that understates the gravity of letting an accused killer leave a police station unchallenged.
Alcazar offered a broader observation about the state of the department. When asked whether the incident surprised him, he was blunt.
"I'm not surprised if they turned him away. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel."
That remark lands against a specific backdrop. The NYPD hired 4,056 new police officers in 2025, described as the largest single-year hiring class in the department's history. To fill those ranks, the department reduced its required college credits for candidates from 60 to 24.
The Post's reporting does not draw a direct line between those lowered standards and the desk officer's conduct in this case. But Alcazar's "bottom of the barrel" comment sits alongside a hiring surge that prioritized volume over traditional qualification thresholds. Whether the officer who turned Thompson away was a product of that surge or a veteran who simply failed to follow procedure is among the questions the department has not answered.
At the center of this procedural failure is a killing. Lovay Williams, 27, was found dead in her apartment on Sept. 6. She had suffered trauma to her face and neck and was declared dead at the scene. Her 7-year-old daughter was inside the apartment and was found unharmed, family members confirmed.
Relatives told the Post that Williams and Thompson had been dating. Thompson was ultimately charged with murder after his successful surrender days later.
Several questions remain unanswered. Whether Thompson had been formally designated as a suspect with an active warrant, or only as a person of interest, at the time he walked into the 33rd Precinct is unclear from available reporting. What the audio and video reviewed by the NYPD spokeswoman specifically shows has not been made public. And no court proceedings following Thompson's murder charge have been detailed.
What is clear is the sequence: a man police were looking for in connection with a woman's violent death walked into a precinct, identified himself through family members, and was handed a phone number and shown the door.
When a murder suspect has to try twice to get himself arrested, the system has not just failed, it has stopped doing the one job taxpayers expect it to do.
