URBANA — When the sun broke through the clouds Wednesday morning after days of rain, Marla Rice thought it was a sign that a guilty verdict was coming in the manslaughter trial for the man accused of shooting her son.

He was right.

Nearly three years after Kristian Philpotts, 29, was fatally shot, Rice said Chief Judge Randy Rosenbaum’s decision to hand down a guilty verdict against Tyjohn Williams, 19, of Champaign was “the first step to justice”.

“It won’t bring him back, but justice has begun because someone has to answer. This person is now being held accountable for what they did,” she said.

Williams was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder in the death of Mr. Philpotts on January 12, 2022.

That evening, Mr. Philpotts, or “KP” to his friends, was driving to Lyft when he picked up Williams and two other teenagers, La’Shown Fenderson and Jaheim Dyer, to drive them to Williams’ appointment.

Mr. Philpotts was saving to attend the University of Illinois at Chicago for his veterinary medicine degree after receiving a bachelor’s degree from Illinois State and a master’s degree from Eastern Illinois, both in pre-vet.

“He would have been a vet by now because we’re looking at almost three years later. He would be done with school,” Rice said Wednesday. “We were robbed. My family was robbed. He was one of the most easy-going, loving and funny people.”

According to Dyer and Fenderson’s testimony during the trial, Williams became nervous as the vehicle neared its destination and demanded to be taken back home.

He called his mother at some point during the trip, who testified that she told him she would reroute the Lyft because she was the one who originally scheduled the ride through the app.

No witnesses described Mr. Philpotts refusing to redirect or engaging in any kind of verbal argument before Williams pulled out a firearm and shot him.

After the information she heard during the investigation and trial, Rice described her son’s killing as senseless.

“I haven’t heard a reason, not one,” she said. “No reason, nothing. My son was just killed.”

While the investigation was ongoing, Urbana police could only share so much with Mr. Philpotts’ family. The trial was the first time they had heard the whole story.

“It was very hard to relive my son’s last moments and what happened to him after he was shot,” Rice said. “It was a little disturbing.”

Both Fenderson and Dyer pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice in 2022 for taking the murder weapon and Williams’ shoes from Mr Philpotts’ vehicle and hiding them immediately after the incident, as well as lying to police in the early stages of the investigation.

Several of Williams’ relatives testified during the trial. The events they described did not always line up with the accounts of other relatives, the evidence found by the police and the testimony of the two eyewitnesses.

For example, Williams’ mother said she hadn’t seen or heard from him since the last call she received minutes after the shooting.

But prosecutors showed part of a taped interview with Williams after his arrest in March 2022, where he told them his mother took him in after the shooting and that he stayed with his uncle in town for two weeks before heading in Georgia, where he was. found later.

Williams’ aunt claimed that on the night of the shooting, Fenderson told her he “shot the Uber,” but that he never told the police or anyone else about it.

In his final decision, Rosenbaum recapped much of the evidence presented by both the prosecution and the defense, highlighting where it did not add up.

“I hate to make this blanket statement, but I think almost every civilian witness lied,” Rosenbaum said, referring to both the trial itself and the investigation.

Even so, he found enough evidence to determine Williams’ guilt.

Williams’ sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 30. Rice said that while she trusts Rosenbaum’s judgment, she is praying for a life sentence.

“He took a life, he should be in prison for life,” she said. “I don’t want another family to be in those seats” in the courtroom.

Rice advocates for better safety for ride-hailing drivers, but now, especially after the lawsuit, she said she wants to advocate against gun violence more broadly.