Courtesy of Mim Young

A self portrait by Rueben Williams.

Courtesy of Mim Young

Rueben Williams in a recent photo.

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

The tractor-trailer involved in the fatal crash with Rueben Williams sits by the side of U.S. 460 in Botetourt County on Tuesday. No charges were filed in the crash.

Rueben Williams knew he was an extraordinary artist, and on his first day as a high school freshman, told his art teacher as much.

"I'm probably one of the best art students you've ever had," William Fleming teacher Jimmy Deck remembers Williams saying. "I'm probably even better than you."

It wasn't an idle boast.

"He was exceptionally talented," Deck said Wednesday.

But for all his confidence and skill, Williams found himself distanced from success. His burning imagination distracted him -- costing him at least one job -- and financial troubles kept him from finishing college, friends and family members said.

The 27-year-old artist was killed Tuesday after he left his job at the Home Shopping Network shipping center on his bicycle. He coasted down snow-slickened Avery Row into the path of a tractor-trailer on U.S. 460 in Botetourt County, according to Virginia State Police. The trucker wasn't charged.

"His talents might have earned him significant recognition in some other life, but in this one, it seems his legacy will be kept with friends and family who hold on to those artworks he gave us while he was here," said Emperial Young, his friend since an art class at William Ruffner Middle School.

Williams won an art scholarship to a school in New York but never got his degree. He landed an internship at a Roanoke advertising agency, but lost the job in a week. He had to bicycle on busy U.S. 460 in miserable weather because he lost his driver's license.

Williams' mother, Sheila Wright, realized her son's skills when he was 9, after they'd eaten at a Chinese restaurant. Back at home, Williams sketched a picture of the eatery's interior.

"I knew I had an artist on my hands," Wright said Wednesday. "It had so much detail and he did it from memory."

Later, Williams clipped apart cereal boxes and used the interior to draw his own superhero trading cards, his mom said. He delighted in drawing trains.

As he aged, Williams developed his artistic style around comics and anime. His mind was full of ideas for characters, costume designs and stories, said Mim Young, Emperial Young's mother.

Emperial Young and Williams became fast friends in middle school, spending hours together at Young's house drawing anime. Mim Young, who called herself Williams' mentor and has studied art at Florida State University, said she recognized the teen's talent.

Williams carried an artist's sketchbook most everywhere and quickly filled every blank space. Then he'd draw on scrap computer paper or whatever else he could find, Emperial Young said.

He was generous with his art and with his time, she said. If she saw a picture she liked in his piles and piles of drawings, he'd give it to her. And when anyone asked him about drawing -- friends' little brothers and sisters or anyone else -- Williams would quickly give an art lesson, Emperial Young said.

His imagination could be an obstacle to his ambitions.

He was fired from his ad agency internship after a week because he left the agency's camera at a hot dog stand and it was stolen.

"That was just like him," Mim Young said. "His head was elsewhere. He lived in a different kind of world inside his head.

"He was a dreamer, and dreamers don't think the same way everyone else does. His life was on a different track."

Williams won at least two scholarships for art after he graduated high school in 2002. But he first enrolled in a community college in New York City. Later, he was accepted into his dream school, Parsons The New School for Design, also in New York.

He never made it thorough his first semester, his mother said.

He couldn't afford the books and supplies he needed, and couldn't take class without them, said his mother. He moved back to Roanoke in 2004.

He continued to draw and worked different jobs, trying to save money to return to art school, his mother said. Sometimes he'd sell his drawings to co-workers, she said.

He ran into trouble with the police for driving with expired plates, without insurance and with a suspended license, according to court records. He had been riding his bike or taking the bus to the Home Shopping Network center since he started there early last month, scanning merchandise bar codes into a computer.

His last post on his Facebook page was Monday. It reads: "Gotta budget! Can't wait til my direct deposit comes in!"

"He was getting back on his feet," Mim Young said. "He was always trying."