By:Jerry Burke
Lynn Williams, a retired Riker's Island security guard, was buried Friday after a funeral Mass held at St. John's Baptist Church in Far Rockaway, Queens. "She died doing what she wanted to do," said her son Joseph, who said his mother retired from Rikers in January 2003 after 20 years.
Williams was working for CSC/DynCorp International, an independent contractor based in Reston, Va., which provides correctional facility employees for the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the war-torn former Yugoslavia. According to a statement from DynCorp, the U.N.'s Central Criminal Investigations Unit continues to look into the attack, which allegedly began when a Jordanian police officer, Sgt. Major Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali, and four other members of his peacekeeping unit opened fire on the three-car caravan carrying Williams and the officers she was training as they were passing through the gates of the North Mitrovica Detention Center.
The two other Americans who were killed were identified as Kim Bigley, 47, of Paducah, Ky., and Gary Weston, 52, of Vienna, Ill. Weston died a week after the attack in a St. Louis hospital. Ten other peacekeepers were injured, including one from Australia, as their group drove three cars out of the prison after completing their shifts.
While the investigation continues, the U.N. is now focusing on the four other Jordanian officers with Ali, who allegedly opened fire with an M-16 machine gun. After fleeing the scene, they were later caught, and all of them have been stripped of the diplomatic immunity peacekeepers are granted. Officials are investigating whether Ali, who was killed as the Americans returned fire, may have had connections with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Williams and the other trainees had been in Kosovo for just over a week, according to DynCorp officials. The bodies of both Williams and Bigley returned with American flags draped over their coffins in honor of their service.
