By The Porterville Recorder : By Aaron Burgin
Julie Lopez, 40, said her son was released from the California Youth Authority in July.

She did not want to start life over in Livermore, the Bay-area city where she lived. Lopez believed the people there would not give her son a chance because of his ethnicity — he was black and Mexican.

Lopez decided to do what she felt was best for her son: She and he moved back to his home in Porterville. “I thought that at least here people knew him,” Lopez said. “I didn’t want him in a place where he would get his food served from the back, and not from the waitress.” The plan took a turn for the worse Thursday.

Police identified a man found in a dry slough bed Thursday morning — the city’s first homicide victim in 2007 — as Clenon Ian Williams. Police said in a statement Friday that Williams’ injuries “appear to be consistent with a gunshot wound to the head.”

Williams was Lopez’s son. “He was robbed of his life,” Lopez said Friday. “This was murder.”

Coroner’s Office officials will determine the cause of death in an autopsy scheduled for Tuesday, Tulare County Sheriff’s Department Sgt. Chris Douglass said.

Porterville police Lt. Chris Dempsie said the investigation into Williams’ death is still in its early stages. “We are still interviewing family members, neighbors near the scene, collecting evidence and other preliminary things right now,” Dempsie said. “Right now we are in a fact-finding stage.”

A bicyclist found Williams’ body in the Porter Slough near the intersection of F Street and Oak Avenue at 11:30 a.m. Thursday. Police responded and declared Williams, 21, dead at the scene. Neighbors in the area reported hearing gunshots in the same area at 4:30 a.m. Police initially found nothing during a 14-minute sweep of the area shortly after the “shots fired” call.

A number of neighbors said the apartment near the intersection where Williams’ body was found is a hotbed for purported gang activity. Police served a narcotics search warrant at the apartment Wednesday afternoon, seizing an undisclosed amount of cocaine and arresting three suspects.

Dempsie said police are not calling the shooting gang-related — yet. “As soon as we can confirm that it is gang-related, we will do it,” Dempsie said. “But it is too early to make that confirmation.”

Williams was the son of Lopez and former Porterville College football player Clenon Williams Sr. His 21st birthday was July 5. “He was so kind, and loving, he’d give you the shirt off his back,” Lopez said. “He did not deserve this.” Lopez, through tears, implored anyone with information to come forward.

“I just want them to talk, or say something,” Lopez said. “I want them to put themselves in our shoes, and imagine how we feel.”