Teen sentenced for shots that killed young mother
In addition to the 30 years, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner added 12 years of extended supervision to Ladarrell Lee’s sentence.
The thoughtless gun violence that killed a young mother in June sent the even-younger shooter to prison Friday for 30 years.
Markeisha Johnson, 25, died at the hand of Ladarrell Lee, 18, as he wildly fired shots toward a group of people near North 22nd and West Locust streets on the afternoon of June 10.
Johnson had been among two groups of women who had been fighting as a couple dozen people, including Lee, looked on. Someone made a cellphone video.
“You’d never imagine watching the video of this wrestling, scrapping, that someone’s going to fire a gun,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Lonski said. “It wasn’t that kind of situation.”
But after the fighting was over, Lee fired at least seven rounds while leaning out the window of a car. Two hit Johnson, a mother of three, in the back. A third shot hit the leg of an 18-year-old man playing basketball down the block.
The victim’s mother, Rochelle Johnson, called Markeisha, the oldest of 13 children, “my right hand,” someone she counted on to care for the family when Johnson was gone.
“I’ve been too strong, for too long, but now I’m at a breaking point,” she said.
That was evident after the hearing. Though Johnson had addressed Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jeffrey Wagner in a measured, if emotional, tone, she erupted once the sentence was announced and had to be restrained in the courtroom by deputies until Lee’s family left the building and Johnson calmed down.
In the middle of his trial last month, Lee pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide, and prosecutors dismissed a second count of recklessly endangering safety.
On Friday, Lee told Wagner he hadn’t understood what a speedy trial was, and that he felt his lawyer had forced him to take the plea deal. He said when he agreed to go in a car with some other guys, he thought they were going to smoke marijuana. He said he didn’t know about the fights or know the fighters.
Earlier, Lee told police he was in a car with some other men and fired toward another car because he thought someone in that car was pointing a gun at them.
In a written apology to the victim’s mother, he wrote that Markeisha “wasn’t the intended target.”
The senseless, reckless nature of the crime frustrated the victim’s family. Several spoke on Friday and asked why someone would fire a gun around so many people when he wasn’t even part of the disputes that had the women wrestling.
Neither the prosecutor nor the defense recommended a specific sentence beyond prison time. Wagner said Lee’s age, the apology he wrote, and his relatively clean record were mitigating factors in the sentence.
In addition to the 30 years, he added 12 years of extended supervision. The maximum sentence would have been 40 years plus 20 on supervision.
“Every day we see what happens on the streets of this city,” Wagner said. “This is certainly an example.”