Neither neighbors nor staff at Xavier Williams’ school suspected the 10-year-old was being abused, but they all noted something odd: He and his younger brother always wore long sleeves, even on hot days.Now the Tavares Police Department, which is investigating the boy’s death, says the long-sleeved shirts were part of a “methodical” and “meticulous” plan by his mother to hide the abuse she and her boyfriend were inflicting on the children inside the tidy Tavares home she purchased two years ago.Interviews conducted and documents reviewed by the Orlando Sentinel suggest the alleged scheme was a tragic success: No one in the boy’s orbit appears to have known enough to ease the pain of his final months, or avert a death that came much too soon.
Xavier died March 21, less than four weeks after he arrived at a hospital in cardiac arrest. Court records show medical staff found bruising — including “severe” bruising on his face — burns and signs of sexual abuse on his body. The child was also bleeding internally.
Xavier Williams, a 10-year-old from Tavares, has died from abuse that a Tavares Police Department detective has called “torture” allegedly at the hands of his mother Kimberley Mills and her boyfriend Andre Walker. (Courtesy of Tavares Police Department)His younger brother, who just turned 9, would later tell police the children were punished by being hit with a copper rod, punched with boxing gloves and tied by wrists and ankles to a ladder with duct.
