PITTSBURGH, PA – The gold tracksuit was supposed to be for a Saturday afternoon hair appointment. Instead, it became the last thing 26-year-old Rayon Williams ever wore.

She kissed her cousins goodbye, told every single person in that house that she loved them, and asked them to save her a plate because she would be back soon. She never came back.

And the most disturbing part of this entire story is not what happened inside that barber shop. It is that the person who killed her had already decided to do it before she even walked through the door.

October 4, 2025. A regular Saturday morning in Pittsburgh’s South Side. Rayon was at home with her cousins, cooking breakfast, laughing, playing music. Her family called her the glue.

“She was smart. She was independent. She was loving. She was all about family,” her mother later said. “I haven’t heard the word ‘I love you’ so many times from her.”

Before she stepped out the door, she went around the room, looked at her people, and made sure they heard it. Then she said those words: *Save me a plate. I’ll be back.*

Somewhere in that house, a plate was set aside for her. It sat there waiting. She never touched it.

Bona’s Barbershop on East Carson Street is the kind of neighborhood spot where barbers know your name, music is always playing, and chairs are full on weekends.

Rayon walked in just before 1:00 p.m., phone in hand, not a worry on her mind. But someone inside that shop had been waiting for her. Twenty-five-year-old Myra Rock Carter was already seated in one of the barber chairs near the front, draped in a barber cape. Underneath that cape was a loaded gun.

Nobody saw it. Not the barbers, not the other customers, not the shop owner. Carter just sat there, completely still, waiting.

To understand how two women ended up in the same barber shop with a loaded gun between them, you have to go back to 2023.

Both Rayon and Myra Carter had been romantically involved with the same person. That is where this started. For two years, the tension between them never went away.

It just got heavier and darker every time their worlds bumped into each other. Long enough for anger to stop feeling like emotion and start feeling like a plan.

Surveillance cameras inside the shop caught everything. Investigators later confirmed that both women were in the same space for roughly 40 seconds before the shooting.

A 19-year-old employee tried to step in and calm things down – a sign that the tension was visible enough that a teenager felt the need to intervene. Carter later told police that Rayon threatened to take things outside, stepped closer, and reached toward her waistband.

Carter assumed Rayon was reaching for a weapon. So Carter reached under that cape and fired three shots.

Rayon ran toward the back of the shop. Then she collapsed onto the floor.

Shop owner Ramon Pierce came rushing out from the back when he heard the shots. He found Carter standing in the middle of his shop, gun still in her hand, barber cape still hanging around her neck. And he found Rayon on the ground.

“I seen it happen,” he said afterward. “I don’t know how to get over that.” Paramedics rushed Rayon to UPMC Mercy Hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly after. Twenty-six years old. Gone because she went to get her hair done.

According to police, Carter admitted to firing the gun three times. She walked out of that barber shop, got into her car, and drove home to Baldwin like she had just finished running an errand. She called her mother.

She called her girlfriend. Then she dialed 911 and turned herself in. When police arrived at her home, the gun was sitting in her vehicle, registered in her name. She told investigators about the two-year conflict, about the shared romantic history.

She even claimed that Rayon had taken a weapon from her at some point during their dispute. But police found absolutely no report anywhere to support that claim.

Then detectives asked her three questions. *Did you actually see a weapon on Rayon?* No, she said. *Were you certain she was going to attack you?* No. She said she was not even sure if Rayon was going to hit her or shoot her. She did not know. *Did you have to pull that trigger?* She said no.

Let that land. She looked investigators in the eye and admitted, with her own mouth, that she did not have to do it. That is not a woman describing self-defense. That is a woman describing a choice.

Carter’s defense attorney argued otherwise at the preliminary hearing. “This is without question self-defense,” he said.

“If somebody is in fear of being killed or shot or seriously injured in that moment, then they have the right to use deadly force under Pennsylvania law.” He said Rayon was taunting Carter, trying to bait her into a fight, threatening to “come for her” outside.

When asked if Carter was remorseful, the attorney replied, “I think that’s a really hard question to answer. She did not want this to happen. She did not bring it on and she didn’t want to have to respond in this way. But she did because she had to save her own life.”

Prosecutors barely needed to respond. They pointed directly to Carter’s own words – that she never saw a weapon, that she was uncertain, that she admitted she did not have to pull the trigger.

Pennsylvania law is straightforward: self-defense only stands when the force used was genuinely necessary. Carter had already collapsed that argument herself.

The judge ruled the case would go to trial on first-degree criminal homicide, a charge that carries the element of premeditation. Bail was denied.

Rayon Williams was not just a name in a court document. She was the person in her family who made everything feel okay. She loved fashion, basketball, music, and dancing, but family was her whole world.

Her grandmother, Lu-anna Coward, had spent over 20 years working alongside families destroyed by gun violence. She had held grieving parents together after the worst moments of their lives. And she had already lost all three of her sons to gun violence.

“When I heard the news, I said, ‘What? Is it going to start on the girls now?’” the grandmother said. Now she was helping her own daughter live through the worst pain she had ever known.

“He wasn’t just a number,” Rayon’s mother said, speaking of every lost family member. “And I’ve been fighting for her all her life, and I’m going to fight for her through her death.”

Bona’s Barbershop closed for several days after the shooting. When they reopened, they released a statement making clear that what happened inside did not represent who they were or the community they had built.

A jury will eventually watch that 40-second clip. They will hear Carter’s own words played back in a courtroom. They will decide what justice looks like for Rayon.

But here is the thing that does not leave. Somewhere in that house, after the phone calls came in and the news spread and the world stopped making sense, there was still a plate sitting on that table.

Food that had gone cold. A seat that nobody could bring themselves to move. A plate that was set aside with love for someone who was never coming back. Rayon did not die in a dark alley. She did not die somewhere reckless or dangerous.

She died getting her hair done on a Saturday afternoon in a busy shop full of people. There was nowhere safer she could have been. And it still was not safe enough.

She kissed her family goodbye that morning. She said, “I love you.” She asked them to save her a plate. And a woman who had already made her decision was sitting in that shop waiting for her to walk through the door. Twenty-six years old. Gone. Rest easy, Rayon.