The 16-year-old Wisconsin boy charged in the Juneteenth shooting that wounded six in Milwaukee last year will be tried as an adult, the Associated Press reported.
Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Kristela Cervera on February 6 granted a request from prosecutors for the trial to be moved out of juvenile court. Judge Cervera said the severity of the alleged crime outweighed the mitigating factors presented by the defense.
When first charged at the age of 15, the boy was facing four counts of first-degree reckless endangerment as a party to a crime, two counts of first-degree reckless injury, as well as one count of possession of a firearm by a delinquent, one count of possession of a dangerous weapon by a juvenile, disorderly conduct, and one count of violation of a nonsecure custody order.
The shooting occurred after 4:00 p.m. on June 19, 2023, shortly after the Juneteenth celebration ended outside of a Milwaukee church.
According to Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman, six teenagers ages 14 to 19 were shot following what investigators believed was a fight between a group of teen girls outside of the church.
According to a witness who had been operating a booth at the Juneteenth festival, after the teenage girls got into a fight, several teen boys jumped into the fray. One of the boys, who got punched in the face, attempted to pull a gun from his waistband but the witness did not see the boy fire the weapon.
Police later confirmed that the boy who pulled the gun was not the suspect. After watching cell phone videos of the fight, police determined that the suspect had run off camera during the altercation and fired his weapon before the other boy could pull the gun from his waistband.
The aftermath of the shooting was captured on a Facebook Live video that showed paramedics treating gunshot victims on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive where just 20 minutes earlier, there were thousands of people attending the Juneteenth festival.
