Local rapper, Darrell Brooks Jr., 39, charged after he plowed his SUV through crowds at the Waukesha Christmas parade, ‘killing six, injuring 62’ – two weeks after he’d been released on $1,000 bail for jumping bail
WARNING, GRAPHIC CONTENT
Darrell Brooks Jr, 39, appeared before a judge in Wisconsin on Tuesday for his bail hearing
The prosecution requested a $5 million cash bail, which they said was warranted given his lengthy criminal history in three states
The death toll on Tuesday rose to six, with a child added to the five known victims, and the number of injured rose to 62
The next hearing was set for January 14 at 9:15amDarrell Brooks Jr., 39, is the driver of the red Ford SUV that plowed through crowds on Sunday at the parade
Brooks was bailed out of jail on November 19 after posting a $1,000 cash bond on charges of battery, disorderly conduct, bail jumping and resisting an officer
On Sunday, he plowed through crowds at 4.39pm in his red Ford SUV, killing five people and injuring 62
Five of the fatalities are adults ranging in age from 52 to 81 and a little girl
Brooks Jr. was fleeing the scene of a domestic dispute as cops were on their way
Details are unclear, but he was ordered to have no contact with a female victim afterwards
Court records show he was charged on Nov 5, paid cash bond on Nov 11 but the records weren’t updated until the 19th – The charges relate to an incident on Nov 2, involving the mother of one of his children in Milwaukee
Brooks is said to have hunted her down in a hotel then followed her in the street in his car, demanding that she get in, before ‘punching her with a closed fist’ and then ‘running her over’
Brooks’ criminal history dates back to 1999 and includes felonies and misdemeanors in different states
It’s unclear why his bond was set so low when he was charged with two felonies on Nov 5, bail jumping being one of them

The man accused of killing six and injuring 62 when he drove his car into a Christmas parade in Wisconsin appeared before a judge on Tuesday, as the court was told of his lengthy criminal history – and a child was added to the list of victims.
Darrell Brooks Jr. made his first appearance in court on Tuesday as the death count rose.
Brooks, dressed in a green sleeveless bulletproof vest, rocked back and forth in his chair during the hearing, staring at the floor throughout.
Brooks has officially been charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide, according to the Waukesha County District Attorney’s Office.
However, during his court hearing on Tuesday, prosecutors said a sixth victim, a child, has also died.
Prosecutors said they will consider a sixth homicide charge due to the child’s death.

Five dancers who were injured during the incident remain in the ICU, according to a statement by the Waukesha Xtreme Dance Team.
‘Our dancers have a multitude of serious physical injuries, of those, five dancers are currently in the ICU,’ read the statement posted to the dance team’s Facebook page.
A young girl who is a member of a dance troupe struck by the SUV, a moment captured on cellphone video, woke up Monday and told doctors, ‘just glue me back together,’ according to her GoFundMe fundraising page organized by a family friend.
‘No child or parent should have to endure this amount pain and suffering,’ the girl’s mother, Amber Konhke, posted Tuesday afternoon.

The fundraising pleas detail the extent of some of the injuries from the incident that has left five dead so far and 48 hurt.
Konhke’s daughter Jessalyn is shown smiling directly at the camera on one GoFundMe page, wearing a white Santa hat and holding matching pompoms.
She is standing alongside other girls on the Waukesha Xtreme Dance team in a picture taken moments before she was struck.
Jessalyn is ‘fighting for her life,’ according to the fundraising account established by family friend Oscar Luna.
She lost a kidney, broke her pelvis and has damage to her liver and lungs, Luna said.
‘This holiday season will be a brutal one for them,’ he said of their family.
In an update posted Tuesday morning, Luna wrote that she had woken up briefly Monday.
‘She is not fully aware of the severity of her injuries but managed to say, `just glue me back together,´’ he wrote. ‘Only a child could reference themselves as a little doll in this situation.’
Julia, who was also marching with her dance team and whose last name also isn’t given, ‘is in the fight for her life,’ suffering from brain trauma after being hit, her fundraising page established by family friend Jen McCarthy says. ‘Everyone that knows this little girl knows what joy she brings to the world,’ the post says. ‘She has a heart of gold, a smile that can light up the room and is loved by so many.’
Brothers Tucker and Jackson Sparks were among three sets of siblings hospitalized after being struck by the SUV, and they remain at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, according to an online fundraiser organized by a cousin.
Tucker, 12, has head injuries but is recovering, and Jackson, 8, suffered a more serious brain injury and ‘needs a miracle,’ according to Alyssa Albro, the niece of the boys´ parents, Aaron and Sheri Sparks. ***’The entire family is devastated,’ Albro wrote.
She said the boys’ parents are at their bedsides.
Aidan Laughrin, a senior at Waukesha South High School, was hit while performing with the marching band, suffering fractured ribs, according to an online fundraiser. The family is ‘tough but the road ahead is going to be tough too, both physically and emotionally,’ the organizer posted.
Another band member, saxophonist Tyler Pudleiner, also was struck and has undergone two surgeries since Sunday. ‘He has a long road to recovery,’ wrote Joane Chmiel, one of two people raising money to help Pudleiner.
Tamara Rosentreter was doing what she loved, entertaining the crowd as part of the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies, when she was struck by the SUV that took the lives of three of her fellow dancers.
The mother of four and grandmother of one was the leader of the troupe, according to an online fundraiser seeking help for Rosenstreter’s recovery.
Brooks was detained after the red SUV he was driving ploughed into the annual Christmas parade in the town of Waukesha, leaving at least five people dead and 40 injured – including at least 12 children on Sunday night.
It’s unclear what time he was arrested. At 7.15pm, nearly three hours after the parade massacre, an alert went out to residents telling them to shelter in place.
His red SUV was found on West College Avenue, some five blocks from where the parade was taking place, and he was taken into custody nearby.
Children were among victims hospitalized including the little girl who was left fighting for her life.
The organizer posted a message from Rosenstreter, who said ‘I’m still here. Lots of pain, stitches, broken bones and lots of bumps and bruises. Love you ALL.’
She described how a woman prayed for her at the scene ‘to help give me peace and comfort’ and how another kept her warm with a blanket.
‘This tragedy is so hard to wrap my head around,’ she said, saying her ‘heart aches’ for the victims and their families, those who witnessed the devastation and ‘for my teammates and their families who are my family.’
Lucero Isabel Perales says several family members were a part of the parade and were struck by the SUV.
That includes a cousin with skull fractures who is in a coma, an uncle who underwent six hours of surgery for a broken leg and another cousin with bruises all over her body.
‘This is a very hard time for all of us, it was something so unexpected,’ Isabel Perales wrote.
More than $787,000 had been raised by Tuesday afternoon for the 18 GoFundMe-verified pages for parade victims. Another community fund for victims had raised more than $600,000 by Tuesday morning, said Waukesha Mayor Shawn Reilly.
The Waukesha County Community Foundation said that fund had grown to more than $916,000 by Tuesday afternoon. ‘There’s so much outpouring of support,’ Reilly said.
‘It warms your heart to know that people are saying, ‘We support your community, we feel for you.”
The suspect arraigned in Sunday’s SUV attack in Waukesha, Wisconsin is 39-year-old Brooks, an amateur rapper from Milwaukee who was bailed out of jail days before allegedly plowing through crowds at a Christmas parade, killing five people and injuring dozens more.
The court heard that he had multiple previous violent convictions, charges filed in three states and lengthy custody time in Georgia.
He had repeatedly failed to show up for court hearings, and a $5 million cash bail was suggested for Brooks – who the court heard was insolvent.
The judge said it was ‘an extraordinarily high bail, but it’s an extraordinary case.’
He said that Brooks had a long history of not following ‘your societal norms’, and said the bail was warranted.
On November 5, Brooks was charged with felony bail jumping, recklessly endangering safety, battery, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer, three days earlier on November 2.
He was ordered to not have any contact with a female victim.
Despite one of his offenses being felony bail jumping, the judge set a $1,000 bond, which he paid on November 11.
His case was updated on November 19 to say he’d been released.

The victims have not yet been identified but children are among those in the hospital, including one girl who is fighting for her life.
On November 5, Brooks was charged with felony bail jumping, recklessly endangering safety, battery, disorderly conduct and resisting an officer, three days earlier on November 2. He was ordered to not have any contact with a female victim.
Despite one of his offenses being felony bail jumping, the judge set a $1,000 bond, which he paid on November 11.
His case was updated on November 19 to say he’d been released.

It’s unclear what his motive was, but police sources say he may have been fleeing an earlier knife attack when he drove into the crowds of children, elderly dancers and spectators at the ‘joy and peace’ parade on Sunday.
One witness, a father whose daughter was in a dance troupe that was struck, said he made eye contact with him and that he was ‘calm and composed.’
Brooks lives some 20 miles away in Milwaukee in a suburban home where he films rap videos in the street. His family have lived in the four-bedroom gray and white Milwaukee bungalow style house for more than a decade, property records show. Even so they are considered newcomers.
‘Most people on this street have lived here 40 or 50 years. But we’re dying off now,’ one neighbor said.
‘Young punks are moving in here, anyone with a bit of money. But they don’t want to know us and we don’t want to know them. I’ve had no dealings with them at all, but I have seen that red SUV parked outside,’ he added.


Brooks is an amateur rapper who is shown above in a YouTube video standing in front of his red Ford truck. He has a long criminal history going back to 1999 with charges including weapons offenses, domestic battery, resisting arrest, drugs charges and concealed carry charges

The Christmas parade began on Sunday at 4pm, with participants starting at Main St. and Whiterock Ave. It was always intended to be a short parade, ending half a mile away at the northeast corner of Cutler Park.
At 4.39pm, the red SUV is filmed speeding down Main Street. It smashed into the crowd, and sent bodies flying, before carrying on down towards the end of the parade, where the car broke through barriers.
The SUV was found less than five blocks away and the driver was taken into custody but it’s unclear exactly where


The incident comes just two days after Kyle Rittenhouse, the accused Kenosha shooter, was acquitted of murder charges in the deaths of two men during the unrest that erupted last year in the wake of a police shooting of a black man.
Kenosha is located about 55 miles south of Waukesha. There is no indication yet that the two are connected


Brooks accidentally ran into the crowds after losing control of his car while fleeing a knife crime.
Social media profiles reveal Brooks was an amateur rapper who went by the name MathBoi Fly, and claimed to have ‘turned to the streets at a very young age’ while growing up in a ‘dangerous West Side neighborhood of Washington Park’. He described himself as ‘the best underground artist in his city’. Those social media profiles have now been taken down.
On Saturday, he posted that he was ‘not surprised’ by the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict but authorities have not yet indicated whether the teen’s acquittal has anything to do with the incident on Sunday.
Brooks has a lengthy criminal history stretching back to the 1990s when he was convicted of battery. At the time of the car rampage, he had two open felony cases against him – one from July 2020 and another from November this year. Waukesha Police Chief Daniel Thompson said no motive has yet been established, but officers are not discounting terrorism.

Officers are also looking into the possibility that he was fleeing an earlier incident involving a knife when he reached the parade, NBC said.
They were pom-poms and shoes and spilled hot chocolate everywhere. I had to go from one crumpled body to the other to find my daughter…Corey Montiho, Waukesha father and school board district member
Detectives will not yet confirm if they believe the attack was a deliberate act of terror, or if Brooks lost control of the vehicle while fleeing an earlier crime.
A press conference has been scheduled for 2pm EST.
Chief Thompson said one officer fired at the vehicle in an unsuccessful bid to stop it, with witnesses saying it sped along the parade route and did not slow down even as it hit a schoolgirls’ dance troupe and elderly members of the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies, along with families sitting by the side of the road.

Dozens of pieces of footage – intended to capture joyous scenes from the annual event – ended up capturing the carnage instead, revealing the car traveled at least three blocks down the parade route before breaking through barriers and speeding away.
A picture captured later at an unknown location showed what appeared to be the vehicle involved backed on to a driveway with the hood badly dented and bent up. It is unclear how the vehicle came to be there.
Corey Montiho, a Waukesha school district board member, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that his daughter’s dance team – made up of girls aged between nine and 15 – was hit by the SUV.
‘They were pom-poms and shoes and spilled hot chocolate everywhere. I had to go from one crumpled body to the other to find my daughter. My wife and two daughters were almost hit.
‘I saw bodies flying. I ran down the parade route to find my girls. Addison, my daughter, heard someone yell ‘car’ and ran away. The girls right next to her were hit.
‘I was there. It was little kids and families… evil is real, fight it every chance you get.’





Jordan Woynilko, who filmed the video above, described walking out of a pub along the parade route into a scene of despair and desperation as people tried to help those wounded by the speeding driver.
Children and the elderly were among those mowed down as the speeding SUV hit crowds of people in Waukesha, Wisconsin.


The incident happened just two days after Kyle Rittenhouse, the accused Kenosha shooter, was acquitted of murder charges in the deaths of two men during the unrest that erupted last year in the wake of a police shooting of a black man. Kenosha is located about 55 miles south of Waukesha.
The Rittenhouse acquittal, which stoked division along political and racial lines, prompted local and national authorities to place security forces on high alert.
The head of the fire department said that 11 adults, including a priest, and 12 children were rushed to six different hospitals in the area. They include several elderly women who were part of a ‘Dancing Grannies’ float and members of a schoolgirls’ dance team, according to reports.

Children’s Wisconsin, a pediatric hospital in Milwaukee, said it was treating 15 patients. Aurora Medical Center-Summit, a hospital in Waukesha County, told CNN that it is treating 13 patients.
Three are listed in critical condition, four in serious condition and six in fair condition.
Jordan Woynilko, a Milwaukee man who shared video of the incident’s aftermath, said he was stepping out of a pub along the parade route when he walked into a scene of desperation and despair.
‘There were moms and dads yelling for their kids, people running around,’ he said. ‘When I re-watched the video, I could hear people talking, and they were like, ‘There’s eight people injured down there. We need an ambulance over here.’ There’s one lady kneeling on the ground crying.’



The Archdiocese of Milwaukee released a statement confirming that parishioners, including children, were among those injured.
The children attend Waukesha Catholic School. The archdiocese said that one of its priests was also among the injured. ‘Our prayers are with the people who have been injured and killed during the tragic incident in Waukesha,’ Sandra Peterson, communication director for the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, said in a statement.
‘Among the injured are one of our Catholic priests, as well as multiple parishioners and Waukesha Catholic school children.
‘Please join us in prayer for all those involved, their families, and those who are traumatized from witnessing the horrible scene.’
Mayor Shawn Reilly told WITI in Milwaukee that he does not believe there is any current danger to the public.
One video shows the SUV striking what appears to be members of a marching band and several others along the parade route before driving on.
The sound of the marching band heard before the SUV approaches is replaced by screams.
Video circulating on social media shows the red SUV driving at unusually high speed through the downtown Waukesha area.

The vehicle sped through the holiday parade even as people participating in the procession waved flags. Dozens of people were injured near the intersection of Main and Barstow streets in downtown Waukesha, according to reports. Moments after the SUV drives by, screams can be heard in the background. A law enforcement official is then seen giving chase after the SUV.
Video posted on social media shows dozens of emergency vehicles responding to the scene in downtown Waukesha on Sunday night.

A television news reporter for Fox6 TV tweeted photos from the scene.
The reporter, Sam Kraemer, tweeted: ‘The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office incident command post is on site.
‘There are bag chairs and handfuls of candy stranded all along Main Street. Another man told us he heard a handful of shots and ran for cover.
‘He was almost hit by the SUV as it pulled through.’
Several die after SUV speeds through and plows into parade


The official social media account of the City of Waukesha indicates that the parade started at 4pm local time.
The parade route began at the intersection of Main Street and Pleasant Street. It starts westward down Main Street and ends at Wisconsin Avenue.
The parade was livestreamed on the city’s Facebook page.
‘Kathy and I are praying for Waukesha tonight and all the kids, families, and community members affected by this senseless act,’ Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers wrote on Twitter.
‘I’m grateful for the first responders and folks who acted quickly to help, and we are in contact with local partners as we await more information.’
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