Man charged with killing his pregnant girlfriend
A 21-year-old pregnant Waukesha woman was shot and stabbed repeatedly and bound with duct tape, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday against her 27-year-old boyfriend.
Quentin Neal of Milwaukee was charged with firstdegree intentional homicide, first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child and possession of a firearm by a felon.
Neal was arrested Monday following an investigation that police say revealed traces of blood in the basement of Neal’s home in the 3400 block of North 77th Street and the discovery of Shannon D. Mani’s body stuffed in a suitcase in a storage facility in the 7800 block of West Tower Street.
The investigation began with a report from Mani’s parents, who contacted Waukesha police shortly before midnight April 13 because their daughter failed to pick up her brother from school that afternoon, never showed up for work and couldn’t be reached.
When Mani’s parents drove to Neal’s residence looking for their daughter, he told them he had not seen her that day, according to the criminal complaint.
Waukesha police contacted Neal by phone, and he again denied having seen her on April 13.
Neal said his last contact with her had been the previous afternoon and that she had not responded to text messages.
In an in-person interview with Waukesha police, Neal changed his story, indicating he had exchanged a text message with her.
Waukesha police determined Mani’s cellphone had last been active about 1:30 p.m. April 13 in the area of Neal’s residence and turned over the investigation to Milwaukee police.
According to the complaint, Neal acknowledged at that point that Mani had been inside his house on April 13 and said they had gotten into an argument. Neal said Mani grabbed a gun he had told her he obtained for his protection and grabbed a kitchen knife. Neal said she tried to fire the gun at him, but it didn’t fire because the safety was still in place.
Neal told police he then shot her twice in the head, causing her to fall down the basement stairs, and that she tried to attack him again, so he cut her with the knife, according to the complaint. He also admitted putting her body in a suitcase and taking it to his storage locker on Tower Street. He also moved her car to a parking lot in Wauwatosa and disposed of her cellphone in a cemetery pond and her purse in a garbage bin, according to the complaint.
When police opened the storage locker, they found Mani’s body bound in duct tape.