ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Officials with the Rochester Police Department are working to find out who murdered one of their own after William Keith Booker, 50, was shot and killed on the corner of Jefferson Avenue and Iceland Street early Sunday morning.
Major Crimes investigators from the RPD are working around the clock to find out exactly what happened.
A small memorial marks the spot where police were called to at about 2 a.m. for a car accident and a person shot. Police say they found Booker with one gunshot wound to the upper body. He was rushed to the University of Rochester Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.
“To hear the news about what happened to him was really tragic,” said former Rochester Police Chief La’Ron Singletary, who worked with Booker on the force. “Booker was a brother, a friend, a family member and somebody who served his community. He also served his country. He was a Marine. Booker was always one of the ones that said, ‘that boy's going to be chief one day.’ And sure enough, I was chief of police."
Singletary said the two became close, and Booker even asked Singletary to stand up for him at his wedding.
“You develop a bond throughout your career in law enforcement with certain people and certain people you become very close with, to the point where they're like family," said Singletary.
Police say Booker was driving his car south on Jefferson Avenue and struck a parked car. They say they aren’t certain if the former colleague was shot before or after the accident.
Singletary says his skills as an officer were impeccable.
“There was one joke that we had in the police department about Booker, because he was a track star, he was an athlete, he was the type of person with who we always joked and said that he never lost a foot chase," he said. "Whenever we heard Booker on the radio chasing someone we knew within seconds, he was going to apprehend whoever he was chasing.”
Another former colleague shared a similar story.
"The first thing I remember about Keith is how fast he was,” Monroe County Undersheriff Korey Brown said. “He was extremely fast. And then as I got to know him, I talked to him and he had just missed the Olympic trials for the 110-meter hurdles. I mean, that's how fast he was. So in the academy, he was just running laps around people. He would race kids in full uniform in the street. And he would just dust them. He was that fast.”
Brown and Booker started in the police academy together in 1996.
“The things that I remember most about him is how positive his attitude was and his laugh,” Brown said. “He was always laughing and joking and just having a good time and always smiling. It seemed like he was always happy to be at work. Nothing rattled him anytime something would happen. He always had a great attitude.”
The RPD says that during Booker's more than 20-year career on the force, he served as a distinguished officer, which included more than 10 years as a school resource officer.
“As we went on in our career, we both became school resource officers, I think at the same time, but I was at East High School and he was at Franklin,” Brown said. “And, you know, he was always there to help the kids. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to make a difference in the community. He was always trying to do his part to help others succeed.”
“It went beyond the school,” Singletary said. “It went beyond the four walls of the school."
Singletary says Booker's priorities shifted when he became a dad.
“He retired because he had a child,” he said. “He was the one who was doing day care. We just called it ‘Booker has daddy day care going on right now,’ because he didn't want anyone else to take care of his child while he was at work. So he retired, and quit his job to be with his daughter. And so I think God allowed him five years to be with his daughter. And the saddest thing about this is that he has a 5-year-old daughter, who will never get to see her father again.”
"And the people that did this are just vicious violent people that need to be in jail," said Brown.