A 22-year-old man has been sentenced to 48 to 60 years in prison for his role in a 2023 shooting that tore through a birthday party in Omaha, killing a Burke High School student and wounding five others. William Brown is the third and final defendant to be sentenced in the case, closing out a prosecution that has now put three young men behind bars for decades.
Brown pleaded no contest to reduced charges and was convicted of manslaughter, second-degree assault and accessory to a felony, according to KETV. As part of the plea deal, four other charges against him were dropped. A separate account from WOWT reported that Brown's June plea agreement led to charges of first-degree murder, second-degree assault, accessory to a felony and four other charges being dropped, with Brown ultimately sentenced on the manslaughter count.
Prosecutors said Brown, Javaris Hesseltine and William Willis stole a car, drove to a party and opened fire on a crowd of roughly 100 people who had gathered for a woman's birthday celebration, the station's report states. Lamarantae Swift, an 11th-grade student at Burke High School, was killed in the gunfire, and five other people were wounded. WOWT reported that officers were called to the area around 2:30 a.m. on October 1, 2023, for a report of a shooting, while KETV's account places the party near 24th and Decatur streets; the two outlets differ on the precise cross streets involved.
Two Co-Defendants Already Sentenced to Decades
Brown's sentencing follows those of his two co-defendants. Hesseltine, now 20, was sentenced in April to 70 to 98 years in prison after being convicted of manslaughter, first-degree assault and two weapons charges, per the same KETV account. Willis was sentenced to 55 to 92 years in prison in December 2025 after being found guilty of assault and discharging a firearm.
A separate WOWT report on Hesseltine's sentencing described him pleading no contest to manslaughter, first-degree assault, discharging a firearm and use of a deadly weapon to commit a felony — a charge list that differs slightly from the KETV summary of his convictions. Either way, all three men involved in the shooting have now been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, bringing a years-long case to a close.
A Broader Pattern of Deadly Omaha Shootings
The case echoes other mass-casualty shootings that have rattled Omaha in recent years. KETV's original coverage of the Swift shooting noted a separate incident the previous November near 33rd and Ames in which eight people were shot during an after-hours party, and Karly Wood died.
Gun violence in Omaha spiked after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and omaha.com has reported that someone is shot in the city every two or three days on average, counting both fatal and nonfatal shootings. More than 1,000 people were shot in Omaha from 2016 through 2022, according to that reporting.
City Points to Declining Crime Numbers
More recent citywide data shows a different trend. The Omaha Police Department reported that the city recorded 26 homicides in 2025, well below its historical average and down sharply from the 50 homicides logged in 2015. The department also said overall crime fell 10 percent year over year in 2025, and that its Homicide Unit achieved a 100 percent clearance rate for the third consecutive year.
For the family and classmates of Lamarantae Swift, those citywide statistics offer little beyond context. The prosecution of Brown, Hesseltine and Willis marks the legal resolution of one deadly night in 2023, even as questions over the exact charges, location and circumstances of that shooting remain described differently across the available reporting.
