Police seek evidence in child’s death
Warrant issued for DNA of suspect in shooting
A 39-year-old Milwaukee man is accused of shooting into a car and killing 3-year-old Brooklyn Harris after her mom drove away from a curb, court records show.
Milwaukee police sought a search warrant seeking Antonio Deshawn Bratcher’s DNA and in doing so, investigators outlined what they believe happened Saturday when Brooklyn and several other children came under fire during an apparent act of road rage.
According to the search warrant affidavit:
About 8:30 a.m. Saturday morning, Brooklyn’s mother went to pick up a friend and the friend’s daughter. She parked on Bonny Place and waited for them to get in the car.
After the woman and child were in their seats, Brooklyn’s mother noticed a black SUV behind her.
She waited for the SUV to pass, but it did not move so she began driving and turned onto North 42nd Street.
Then, she heard gunshots and glass breaking.
She turned to see her daughter bleeding. Brooklyn had been hit in the head. The 3-year-old girl died less than an hour later at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, where paramedics had taken her for treatment.
As police swarmed the area, they found two .45-caliber casings near North 42nd Street and West Townsend Avenue.
Police got a description of the black
SUV, which also had pink writing on the windshield, and shared the information over the radio. About 9:50 a.m., two officers spotted a similar vehicle near North 40th and West Galena streets and chased after it.
The driver of the SUV, a 2018 Ford Escape, sped away and crashed on North 26th Street, near Walnut Street.
A witness told police the SUV had hit a curb and went airborne before landing on its side. The witness said a man who ran away was wearing a white tank top.
Police found the suspected driver, identified as Bratcher, about 11:40 a.m. hiding under a front porch near the crash site.
He was not wearing a shirt, but police found a white tank top with blood on it in a covered carport nearby.
Inside the SUV, police saw a silver handgun magazine, consistent with the .45 caliber casings found at the scene. The SUV was registered to the suspect’s girlfriend, according to police.
The search warrant, first reported by WISN-TV, says the suspected driver faces possible charges of first-degree intentional homicide and being a felon in possession of a gun.
A court commissioner signed off on the search warrant and police took a cheek swab from the man to see if it matches DNA found on the tank top, magazine and blood at the original shooting scene.
As of Tuesday morning, Bratcher had not been charged. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel typically does not identify uncharged suspects but does make exceptions in high-profile cases and cases in which a suspect has been clearly identified through arrest records.
Bratcher remained in Milwaukee County Jail Tuesday on $1 million bail. He has prior convictions for a pair of armed robberies of restaurants in 1998. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and 15 years of probation.
‘I was afraid he was going to kill us’
Ten months ago, a close friend of Bratcher’s filed for a restraining order against him.
Bratcher had taken her car without her permission, the friend wrote, and brought it back with a large dent. Later that day, he abruptly left her house with her spare key. She caught him in the driveway with the engine running, so she got in the passenger seat.
“On the expressway, he was driving insanely wreckless (sic) and we had come inches away from hitting numerous vehicles,” she wrote in the petition for the restraining order.
“I was afraid he was going to kill us by the way he was driving.”
Bratcher did crash into someone and refused to pull over, the woman wrote, and almost caused another hit-and-run crash in Milwaukee because he ignored stop signs and red lights.
At one point, Bratcher stopped the car and the woman tried to grab her keys. Bratcher slapped and punched her, she said. She finally was able to escape when he stopped somewhere else and left the keys in the ignition.
In the petition, the woman also described her fear of Bratcher and his “people,” whom she knows to carry guns.
“I’ve been living in fear of him and his associates,” she wrote.
A court commissioner granted her request for the restraining order, making it effective until Oct. 10, 2022.
Court records show Bratcher faced a hit-and-run traffic charge for what appears to be the same incident the woman described. Bratcher pleaded no contest and was found guilty, but the case was reopened months later and dismissed.
Bratcher had been the subject of another restraining order in 2008. In that case, a man said Bratcher “beat, kicked, stomped” him before forcing the man to strip and robbing him.
“He threatened my life by saying that if I did not strip he would kill me by telling a third party to get his pistol out of his house,” the man wrote in his petition. A judge granted the restraining order and it expired May 28, 2012.
Accused of shooting a man in the chest
Bratcher has not been legally allowed to own or possess guns since 1998 when he was convicted of two armed robberies at JJ’s Diner and a George Webb.
The robberies followed a similar format: One person waited as the getaway driver, while Bratcher and two friends entered the eateries with “Jason” hockey masks and guns.
They robbed employees and customers of cash, cigarettes and anything else they had, including a calculator, court records show. He pleaded no contest to four felonies, was found guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
In 2006, Bratcher was charged with shooting a man in the chest during a robbery outside the House of Jazz tavern on West North Avenue.
The man survived and told police a man had approached him with a revolver, saying “Break your pockets.”
The man refused. The assailant swung the gun at him, but the man ducked and blocked the blow.
“Man, we don’t have to even go this route, please don’t do this, you don’t have to pull that out,” the man recalled pleading to the shooter.
Then, the assailant shot him once in the chest.
The wounded man told police he knew a man nicknamed “Murder” was at the tavern that night and often was with a friend named “Shawn.” Police knew Bratcher sometimes went by Shawn as a shortened version of his middle name, according to court records.
About a month after the shooting, Bratcher was picked up by police at the scene of a fatal car crash. He was a passenger. The driver, Christopher House, known as “Murder,” died in the crash.
The robbery victim then picked Bratcher’s photo out of a lineup as the man who shot him.
“I’ll never forget that fool’s face,” the victim told police.
When police interviewed Bratcher, he admitted he was at the tavern the night of the robbery, but said House did the shooting. Bratcher was charged with attempted armed robbery, first-degree reckless injury and being a felon in possession of a gun.
The case ultimately was dismissed after the shooting victim refused to testify in court.