Man charged after courthouse fight
A 37-year-old Minot man made court appearances on Monday on charges that he assaulted and terrorized one man in November 2015 and threatened another man in the Ward County Courthouse last December.
Clenter Lee Williams is charged with aggravated assault and terrorizing, both Class C felonies, for the November 2015 incident, and disorderly conduct, a Class B misdemeanor, for the incident in December 2016.
According to a probable cause affidavit for the first case, Williams got into a fight with his roommate Emmanuel Ramson, on Nov. 1, 2015, pointed an AR-15 in Ramson’s face and then moved the barrel from Ramson’s forehead, his cheek and then into the other man’s mouth. While doing this, Williams threatened to kill Ramson. Ramson told police he believed the weapon was loaded and that Williams was going to kill him. The two men went outside and then pushed each other back and forth. Williams ordered Ramson to leave, but Ramson had nowhere else to go. Williams then went to his car, opened the trunk, removed a revolver and hit Ramson on the back of the head with the firearm. Ramson told police that he knew the revolver was loaded.
The state’s attorney’s office did not file charges in this incident until March 6, 2017, some 16 months after the crimes allegedly occurred.
According to the probable cause affidavit in the second case, Antwan Alexander told the Ward County Sheriff’s Office that Williams had followed him into the courthouse on Dec. 21, 2016 and made comments such as, “I will kill you.” Outside the courtroom, Williams again threatened to kill Alexander and at the conclusion of the court proceedings. Williams had a protection order against Alexander. A relative with Alexander in the court room corroborated Alexander’s account.
Alexander, 19, was sentenced in January to three years in prison for reckless endangerment. He fired bullets into an occupied apartment building in Minot last September. No one was injured. Alexander thought Williams, his girlfriend’s uncle, lived in that building. He claimed that Williams is involved in drug and gang activity and had threatened him and had him beaten up. Alexander said he had tried and failed to obtain a protection order against Williams. He thought he was protecting his family by shooting at the building. Alexander has two babies with his girlfriend, Candace Hamilton, who wrote a letter to the court in January in support of her boyfriend’s story.
– Andrea Johnson