BRYSON CITY, N.C. (WJHL) — Former Johnson City business owner Sean Williams is now being held without bond on a federal criminal charge at the Swain County, N.C. jail.
Swain County Sheriff Curtis Cochran said Williams was transferred to Swain County Friday from neighboring Jackson County, where he had been arrested April 29 on drug charges.
Williams, who had been due in Jackson County Court Monday, was being held on $1 million bond after a Western Carolina University police officer searched his car early that morning and allegedly found more than 12 ounces of cocaine and 14 ounces of methamphetamine.
Williams’s Jackson County case has been rescheduled, and he now has a hearing May 23 in district court there.
News Channel 11 contacted the Eastern District of Tennessee federal court in Greeneville with questions about Williams’s case. An official there said the court could not provide any confirmation about a sealed indictment or any pending federal court appearances for Williams.
Williams, the former owner of Glass and Concrete Contracting LLC with a principal office at Williams’s apartment on the fifth floor of 200 East Main Street, was wanted for more than a year on a federal ammunition charge, according to several public documents.
An investigation by the Johnson City Police Department (JCPD) began in September 2020 after a woman fell five stories from the window of 200 East Main Street Suite 5.
JCPD investigator Toma Sparks’s case notes into the investigation of Mikayla Evans’s fall (Evans survived) show that on Nov. 12, 2020, he “spoke with Kat Dahl about getting a federal indictment for the ammunition found in his Liberty safe…”
Dahl was a U.S. federal attorney who worked with the JCPD through a memorandum of understanding, focusing on bringing federal charges for certain drug trafficking and weapons cases.
While Sparks’s investigation into Evans’s fall ultimately concluded “the investigation into this case didn’t reveal any criminal activity,” Williams has been publicly wanted by federal marshals since July 2022, and other records show he was under indictment before that.
A Jonesborough police report about a disturbance at the Washington County Register of Deeds office on April 19, 2022, shows that Williams caused that disturbance over a pending property sale.
“It was later determined that the suspect Sean Williams has a federal warrant from the U.S. Marshal’s service for weapons violations,” the report reads.
The same report noted that Williams’s former business partner told a Jonesborough officer “that she has spoken with JCPD concerning Williams in the past concerning his whereabouts.”
