Brooklyn gangbanger charged in fatal shooting of tourist Ethan Williams was coerced into confessing, lawyer says

The lawyer for the Brooklyn gangbanger accused of fatally shooting an Indiana tourist in a case of mistaken identity claimed that his client’s confession was coerced and should be tossed.

William Freeman, 26, who pleaded not guilty on Friday to the 2020 murder of college student and avid skateboarder Ethan Williams, 20, admitted to the crime after cops traced the gun back to him.

His lawyer Jay Schwitzman, however, accused detectives of making improper promises to Freeman to get him to implicate himself in Williams’ murder, such as telling him he would be able to go home if he “admitted to participating in this.”

“My position is that this is a false confession,” Schwitzman said. “I’m confident that at the end of the day there were promises made either on the record or off the record to induce him to make false statements.”

Law enforcement sources said the killing was gang-related. The gunman mistook Ethan’s group for rival gang members he believed had murdered his cousin.

Cops identified Freeman as a person of interest more than a year ago, but did not have the evidence to make the case. They developed DNA evidence and matched to a gun recovered from the scene, the sources said.

On Nov. 3, after Freeman was arrested on an unrelated petty larceny charge in Manhattan, he made statements to detectives implicating himself and was charged with murder and illegal weapons possession.

Detectives are allowed to make promises to suspects in order to get their cooperation. But in recent years, there has been a movement to restrict those types of tactics by law enforcement.

The Friday arraignment spanned just a few minutes, but it had been two years in the making for Ethan’s parents, Jason and Susan Williams, who made the trip from Indiana.

“It’s all just really sad,” Susan Williams said “We missed Ethan. He was a good kid. He didn’t deserve any of this.”

Added Jason Williams, “He would have invited that guy onto the stoop to hang out, if he had not shot at him. He would have wanted to be his friend.”

Ethan was on a dream trip to the city with friends when he was killed on n Oct. 24, 2020. They were sitting on the stoop of their Bushwick Airbnb when someone opened fire from across the street. One deadly round struck Ethan in the chest

The parents of the slain man said that their son was a promising student and aspiring filmmaker at Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind. He was an avid skateboarder, and read voraciously.

He and his family were helping to raise money for a school in Rwanda, the native country of his adopted sister, Ella. He also has a brother named Aidan, who is in college.

Brooklyn Supreme Court Vincent Judge Del Giudice ordered Freeman held without bail on Rikers Island. Schwitzman said he would make a bail application at a future hearing.

Three young woman and a man who attended the proceeding to support Freeman had no comment.