David Williams was 50 when he was killed by gunfire at the Hotel Belleclaire in Manhattan on February 3, 1983. Memorial listings group him with three others killed in the same incident: Christine Leacock, age 25; 12-year-old Desiree Winfield; and 61-year-old hotel manager Jacob Zimmer. The shooting occurred inside the single-room-occupancy building at Broadway and West 77th Street, a mixed long-term and transient residence whose narrow corridors and shared lobby were witnesses to the violence.

Contemporaneous wire-service accounts identified the suspected shooter as Alban Leacock, a 41-year-old handyman or porter who lived and worked at the hotel; reports say he used a handgun in his seventh-floor apartment and that he surrendered to police. Later appellate records show Trevor Alban Leacock was prosecuted and convicted on violent gun offenses arising from the episode, including manslaughter in the first degree and attempted murder in the second degree.