Former WMU football player shot, killed at Indiana hospital in scuffle with security

A member of the 2019 Western Michigan football team was shot and killed at a hospital in Munster, Ind., early Tuesday morning, after a scuffle broke out between the player and a security guard.

According to the Times of Northwest Indiana, Jamal Williams was a patient at the hospital and had gotten into a physical altercation with a nurse, prompting a call to security.

When security intervened, according to the paper, Williams began choking one security guard, who asked a second security guard to shoot. The second security guard then shot both men, and killed both of them. An earlier published report that Williams grabbed the guard's gun and shot him — information provided by the police — was corrected by the paper later Tuesday.

Williams, 22, was a defensive tackle for Western Michigan, playing in nine games last season. He didn't play either of the previous two seasons after transferring from College of DuPage.

Several of his former Western teammates paid tribute to Williams on social media Tuesday.

Williams was a "psychiatric" patient at the hospital, according to the paper, and had been "beating the nurse pretty badly," Lake County Sheriff Oscar Martinez told The Times. That's when security arrived.

The Community Hospital security officer who was killed was Ryan Askew, 59, of Crown Point, Ind.

Williams, a Chicago native who measured 6-foot-3 and 290 pounds, was a three-time all-league selection in high school in Illinois, and had 31 tackles and 6½ sacks as a sophomore at College of DuPage. He had two tackles and a half-tackle for a loss in 61 career snaps at Western Michigan, all in 2019.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tonypaul1984