Man shot washing windows outside Journal Sentinel building
Suspect was inside car, shooting at another vehicle
A 30-year-old man was shot Thursday while washing windows at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel downtown office building.
Initial investigation indicates the shooting suspect was inside a passing vehicle and was trying to shoot at another vehicle, according to Milwaukee police.
The window washer and the Journal Sentinel building were not targeted and the investigation is ongoing, police said.
The shooting occurred on the N. 4th St. side of the Journal Sentinel building shortly after 1:30 p.m. and shattered one of the building’s windows.
The building address is 333 W. State St., and the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena, the BMO Harris Bradley Center and a parking lot are on the other corners of the intersection.
The man was wounded on his left side and was moaning in pain and being treated by security right after the shooting. Paramedics and police arrived about 1:40 p.m.
Video surveillance footage showed a black or blue late model Infiniti driving south on N. 4th St. before coming to a stop at the traffic light at State St. The driver waited for about a minute at the stoplight, then rolled down the window, extended a gun and fired what witnesses in the area described as at least four gunshots.
The car then sped off south on 4th St.
The wounded man’s co-worker Greg Kintop said they had been outside the building washing windows since 8 a.m. and didn’t hear or see anything unusual before the shooting. They had been cleaning the building for several days and were just finishing up.
“Just gunfire,” he said. “We were just standing outside and cleaning the windows and then just pop-poppop-pop.”
Kintop added that he saw a “blue car chase down the street” after the shooting.
“We were just cleaning windows,” he said.
Kintop said the man has worked with the company, Al’s Window Cleaning, on-and-off for several years. He added that the man has a wife and three kids, and just dropped his youngest child off Thursday morning for the first day of kindergarten.
“He’s a good guy,” Kintop said. “He’s got kids and a wife, that’s all I know.”
Shootings are relatively
rare in downtown Milwaukee, but they have happened.
Last month, 26-yearold Kakuma V. Kennedy was killed in a shooting that wounded two other people near Duke’s on Water.
The shooting took place in the early morning hours of Aug. 21 outside the bar on N. Water St. at E. Juneau Ave.
Jeffrey Jensen happened to be washing windows on the nearby 30-story Moderne building when he heard the shots, which he said he first thought were sounds from a building collapse or equipment failure.
He said it was hard to believe someone would be shooting over the lunch hour downtown on a workday, but that he sees and hears threats of violence all the time, including from people he asks to leave an area bar when he works security.
“It’s nobody’s fault,” Jensen said of the violence. “It’s not the police’s fault, the mayor’s fault, the governor’s fault. It’s the people’s fault.”