The parade’s lineup included cheer, dance and band entries associated with district schools.
The Waukesha school district canceled classes Monday and Tuesday and said extra counselors would be on hand for students and staff. They suffered injuries ranging from scrapes on their faces to broken bones and serious head injuries, she said. Amy Drendel, medical director of the emergency department. The Milwaukee Dancing Grannies posted on its Facebook page that its members were “doing what they loved, performing in front of crowds in a parade, putting smiles on faces of all ages, filling them with joy and happiness.”Įighteen children ages 3 to 16 were brought to Children’s Wisconsin Hospital, including three sets of siblings, said Dr. Police identified those killed as Virginia Sorenson, 79 LeAnna Owen, 71 Tamara Durand, 52 Jane Kulich, 52 and Wilhelm Hospel, 81. Schneiter said that after sheltering in a store, she emerged to see bodies in the street, along with strollers, chairs, candy and shoes. Behind it, people were screaming, running, searching for family and friends and unsure whether they were still in danger, he recalled. Walter said he saw a red SUV careen into view and watched it hit a member of his real estate-agency parade contingent, then barrel straight into members of the Waukesha South High School marching band.
“There were these piles of blankets with cops standing over them that you just knew were bodies.” “It was like a war scene walking through there” afterward, said Ken Walter, who had been riding in the parade in a hot air balloon basket towed on a trailer along with his wife and youngest son. One video shows the moment the SUV broke through the barricades and includes the apparent sound of gunfire. The horror of the crash was recorded by the city’s livestream and onlookers’ cellphones. The rapper uses the name MathBoi Fly on his Twitter and other social media accounts. On a YouTube page, a video that has since been removed showed him rapping in front of a red Ford SUV resembling the one at the parade.
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Republican Rebecca Kleefisch, a former Wisconsin lieutenant governor who is running for governor in 2022, called the killings “yet another avoidable tragedy that occurred because a violent career criminal was allowed to walk free and terrorize our community.”īrooks is an aspiring rapper. The DA’s office said it is investigating the matter. The Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office said prosecutors’ $1,000 bail recommendation for Brooks was “inappropriately low,” given the charges.
His attorney in those cases, Joseph Domask, said he was not representing him in the parade crash. In the other case, filed in July 2020, Brooks is charged with reckless endangering and illegal possession of a firearm. In that case, a woman told police that Brooks deliberately ran her over with his vehicle in a gas station parking lot after a fight. Records show his $1,000 cash bond was posted on Friday. 5, he is charged with resisting or obstructing an officer, reckless endangering, disorderly conduct, bail jumping and battery. Brooks was not injured.īrooks has two open criminal cases in Milwaukee County. The chief said that while police were not pursuing Brooks before he entered the parade route, an officer did fire a shot to try to stop him but ceased shooting because of the danger to others. “It took a second to register, like, ‘Is that what we really just saw?’ And then you looked in the road and there were just people laying in the road.”Īt least nine patients, most of them children, were listed in critical condition at two hospitals, and seven others were reported in serious condition. “It looked like dummies being thrown in the air,” said Nicole Schneiter, who was there with her children and grandchildren. Mayor Shawn Reilly described the parade as a “Norman Rockwell-type” event that “became a nightmare.” Members of a Dancing Grannies club were among those killed, as was a bank employee. The dead were identified as four women ages 52 to 79 and an 81-year-old man. On Sunday, a joyous scene of marching bands and children dancing in Santa hats and waving pompoms gave way in an instant to screams and the sight of crumpled bodies as the SUV sped through barricades and struck dancers, musicians and others in the community of 72,000. He has been charged with crimes 16 times since 1999 and had two outstanding cases against him at the time of the parade disaster - including one in which he was accused of deliberately running down a woman with his vehicle. Wisconsin parade tragedy: Witnesses describe chaos after SUV plows into Christmas parade