CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) – A father is speaking out after the man serving a life sentence for the murder of his 1-year-old daughter eluded police officers who were taking him to a doctor’s appointment in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Convicted murderer Ramone Alston escaped on Tuesday morning, August 13.

The child’s father wonders how the Ministry of Public Security could allow this.

“We have no special feelings for Mr. Alston, we are just unhappy with the (Department of Public Safety) and its efforts to keep him in custody, or lack thereof. We wish Mr. Alston and his family nothing but peace, blessings and prosperity,” Maleah’s father, Shaquille Williams, said in a statement Tuesday.

Williams added that he was bothered by the fact that he “got out of his shackles in some way.”

Maleah Williams

On Christmas Day 2015, children in a Chapel Hill neighborhood were doing what most children do: playing with their toys. In most parts of North Carolina, it was a warm holiday that gave them the opportunity to play outside.

Maleah Williams was one of those children. Although she was only one year old, Maleah’s mother was outside with her, holding her daughter in her arms as they watched the children play. On what should have been a holiday, things suddenly turned tragic.

Shots were fired in an area where children were playing outside Trinity Court Apartments. Maleah was hit by a bullet as she sat on her mother’s lap. Tylena Williams told ABC11 in 2015 that everyone started running and then she noticed her daughter was bleeding.

Willams said that under the gaze of several adults, about 10 children were running around playing with their new Christmas toys. Williams said she was holding Maleah when she saw a car drive through the parking lot, then drive up a hill and stop near a row of dumpsters. She said that a man in the car started firing into the yard below.

“And he just started shooting and I ran,” Williams said. “I felt my body so warm and my baby bleeding so much and gasping for air and I kept telling her I love her – please don’t leave me.”

Ms. Williams later told ABC11 that Maleah had been shot in the head. Maleah, whose nickname was “Peanut,” died on December 27, 2015, two days after the gunshot wound.

Three men were arrested and charged a few days after the shooting. Charges against one of the suspects were dropped in February 2016.

Four years after Maleah’s death, in January 2019, the suspects pleaded guilty. Pierre Je Bron Moore was sentenced to 24 to 34 years in prison. Ramone Jamarr Alston received a life sentence.