Murder Suspect Arrested Driving From Indiana Pacer Shawne Williams' House

Chalk this up as another horribly awkward (that may be an understatement) and ill-timed public relations debacle for the Indiana Pacers; a friend of Pacers forward Shawne Williams was arrested on Wednesday night while leaving his house and while driving a car registered to Williams. The big kicker of course, is that he was presumably spending considerable time with Williams in Indianapolis despite having an outstanding murder warrant in Tennessee.

Police say they observed 20-year-old Gary "Little Bud" Bohannon leaving William's home in the 4700 block of River Ridge Road on the north side about 6:00 p.m. Wednesday night. According to police, Bohannon got in and drove a Dodge truck that was registered to Williams and was stopped a short time later and taken in to custody without incident.

Bohannon was wanted out of Tennessee on a murder charge.

Police say Bohannon was arrested under the alias, "Roosevelt Rollins" on September 11, 2007 while riding in a vehicle with Williams in Indianapolis. He was arrested then on gun and drug charges.

Williams apparently left tonight's game for "personal reasons", which certainly doesn't bode well for the type of punishment he could face (from the team, presumably). And I don't want to jump to any conclusions here, but if Williams was continuing to hang out with an associate who had drugs and guns in his car only a few months ago, it's pretty conceivable that Bohannon could have been staying at Williams' house. It also begs the question of how old this murder warrant was/is, if he wasn't flagged for it in September.

The biggest though, from strictly a basketball perspective, is wondering when this type of thing will stop happening to the Pacers, who have been doing their best to try and seeshed the nasty player-personnel image that has seemingly been following them since "The Brawl" a few years ago. It's to the point that even when someone doesn't accuse Marquis Daniels of rape, the headlines make Larry Bird and Co. cringe. And this one probably won't help either.