The father of the young Big Apple straphanger charged with stabbing a rowdy ex-con to death on a Brooklyn subway train said his son had no choice but to defend himself — but remains haunted by the harrowing ordeal.
James Williams told The Post that his 20-year-old son, Jordan, is still “traumatized” by the fatal encounter on the J train last week and called it “the most challenging experience I personally have been through.”
“He’s young,” the elder Williams said Monday. “This life experience is tough. It’s one of the things that you never want to go through in defending yourself or anybody else.
“He was forced to step up,” he said of his son.
Police said Jordan Williams, of Queens, was on the subway with his girlfriend around 8 p.m. Tuesday when Devictor Ouedraogo began harassing straphangers.
Ouedraogo, 36, – who served time in state prison in 2009 for an attempted robbery in Queens — allegedly yelled he was going to “erase someone” before he confronted Williams’ girlfriend.
“Want to f–k?” authorities said he asked her.
Williams pushed the older man when he persisted, prompting Ouedraogo to slug him and his girlfriend, according to sources and witnesses — with the two men then getting into a brawl, during which Williams allegedly stabbed and mortally wounded Ouedraogo.
The dad, who works as a DJ and as a driver for Uber Eats, said his son did what he had to do.
“I don’t think that he regrets standing up because, you know, I always taught him to protect — especially out of fear — himself and others,” James Williams. “That’s our job in society and that’s what he was taught as well.
Ouedraogo was rushed to NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Jordan Williams, who has no prior arrests, was immediately arrested and charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. He was released without bail.
“I just really wish it could’ve been some other way,” the dad added. “We never want anybody to lose their life in any of these situations that we are going through. I don’t know if it’s proper to send condolences because, with [Ouedraogo’s] family, I know they have to be going through it as well.
“We don’t know what triggered this man,” he added of Ouedraogo. “We would have wanted him to get [the] help that he needed.”
James Williams agreed that his son’s case bears similarities — but also “intricate differences” — to the case of former Marine Daniel Penny, who also faces manslaughter charges in the chokehold death of Jordan Neely on an F train last month.
Penny said Neely was threatening others on the train on May 1 — and he feared others’ safety before grabbing him and holding him in a chokehold til he stopped moving. Penny was arrested May 12 after the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office charged him with second-degree manslaughter.
“The similarity is you have a human being stepping up for others,” James Williams said. “The difference is Daniel Penny, even though some consider him a hero or brave for what he did, he wasn’t under attack. Jordan [Williams] was under attack when he made those decisions.
“Daniel Penny was allowed to go free … and then he was asked to come in,” he said. “He wasn’t arrested. He gave himself up. He had a long time out. My son was arrested right away.”
In court last week, Brooklyn prosecutors said Jordan Williams and his girlfriend stayed on the train after the fatal encounter until the cops caught up with them at the Chauncey Street station.
Williams allegedly had a folding knife in his backpack when police arrested him.
Passenger-recorded videos and eyewitness accounts corroborated claims that Ouedraogo was aggressively harassing the couple.
The Post has not been able to reach family for Ouedraogo.
Meanwhile, James Williams said his son — who now faces a top prison sentence of 25 years to life if convicted — remains so distraught over the incident that his family is urging him to get help.
“We have a lot of people on the streets that are put in bad situations here,” he said.
“It’s no more of a village-type of teaching, the nurturing. It’s like almost every man for themselves out there and it’s real crazy.”
