Teen dating violence at center of homicide trial
Police had been called on boyfriend previously
More than a year after a Milwaukee teen was gunned down in her home and her father wounded, her ex-boyfriend is going on trial for the fatal shooting.
Stephanie Jones, 18, was shot and killed Jan. 3, 2017. Her longtime boyfriend and the father of her child, Hakeem Tucker, faces a charge of firstdegree intentional homicide.
His trial started Tuesday with jury
selection and is expected to illuminate the deadly outcomes of teen dating violence and domestic abuse when testimony begins Wednesday. Police and court records show Tucker, now 20, had a history of abusing Jones and her family.
National surveys and studies have documented the prevalence of teen dating violence.
Nearly 23% of women and 14% of men who were victims of stalking or physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner first experienced some form of violence from that partner as a teenager, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
After the homicide, Jones’ mother told police her daughter said Tucker stalked her, pointed a gun at her numerous times and threatened to kill her, according to a criminal complaint.
Prosecutors say when Tucker was interviewed by police, he asked to view a crime scene photo of Jones.
He told detectives he wanted “to see that photo again because he did not get a chance to see her run into the other room and collapse. (Tucker) then started to laugh,” the complaint says.
As a result of Jones’ death, the Milwaukee Police Department and the Sojourner Family Peace Center, which helps victims of domestic violence, created a “High Risk Team” with other partner agencies.
The group meets weekly to take a deep dive into cases in which victims are at the highest risk of lethal violence. Some of the high-risk warning signs are strangulation, access to guns and violent episodes that escalate in severity
and frequency.
The goal is to prevent more women from dying as Jones did.
‘Out of control’
In November 2013, Milwaukee police were called to the Joneses’ home on North 41st Street. The teen’s mother said Tucker confronted her and wanted to know where her 15-year-old daughter was.
She said she didn’t know when her daughter would be home and Tucker slapped her, threw a TV into the wall and broke a fan, the reports say. Another relative in the house came into the room and saw Tucker with a gun.
Tucker ran from the house and officers caught up with him in his mother’s silver car. Police found a loaded .22-caliber pistol inside the vehicle.
In an interview with police, Tucker said he found the gun two weeks earlier and carried it for protection. He said he grabbed Jones’ mother because she came up to him with scissors.
In the report, police wrote: “Tucker admits he was out of control, he knows he needs help, and that he has a anger management problem.”
Sixteen months later, Jones and her 1-year-old daughter went missing.
The two were last seen at the baby’s first birthday party on March 21, 2015. Three days later, Jones’ mother called police and said she believed Tucker was keeping Jones from coming home.
Soon after the party, she had talked to Jones on the phone. Her daughter said she would come back “if they let me come home,” which alarmed her mother. After that, whenever her mother tried to call, it went straight to voicemail.
Jones’ mother told police the couple had “numerous verbal and physical altercations” in the past and she believed Tucker “is capable of many things based on his previous actions with her and her family.”
When the officer asked if she thought Tucker was capable of harming or killing Jones or the baby, she said no but added he was “very controlling.”
Milwaukee police put out a “critically missing” alert and searched for Jones and the baby at Tucker’s home. They did not find the teen, her boyfriend or their child.
Jones’ mother called police on March 27, saying Jones and the baby had returned home “without incident” and were not the victims of a crime, according to reports.
The fatal shooting
Milwaukee police were sent to two separate domestic violence-related battery calls involving Tucker and Jones in December 2016.
By Jan. 3, 2017, the two had broken up.
That night, Tucker climbed in the window of Jones’ house and was confronted by her father, authorities say.
As the two struggled, Jones came into the bedroom and shouted: “Don’t shoot my daddy,” according to the criminal complaint.
Tucker aimed the pistol at her father and shot him before turning around and shooting her in the chest, the complaint says.
Jones, 18, was killed and her 54-yearold father was seriously injured.
Tucker fled. Police caught up with him three days later, seeing him in a car.
As he was being arrested, Tucker reached into the car and grabbed a loaded pistol. He pointed it over his shoulder toward several officers.
“Shoot me! Shoot me!” the officers heard him say.
With one motion, an officer reached for Tucker’s hand, twisting it and forcing him to drop the gun.
Mandatory life sentence
In a police interview, Tucker said Jones’ father confronted him with a gun, they struggled over the weapon and it fired.
Tucker was on probation at the time of the shooting. He had pleaded guilty to armed robbery after pulling a gun on a former high school classmate and taking his cellphone and a video game system, court records show.
A Milwaukee County judge sentenced Tucker to 40 months, or more than three years, in prison and then stayed, or suspended, the sentence for 31⁄2 years of probation instead.
If Tucker failed to follow probation rules, he could then serve the prison sentence. After his arrest in January 2017, he was sent to state prison in Green Bay on that case.
If convicted of the first-degree intentional homicide, Tucker faces a mandatory life prison sentence.