Mall shooting suspect remains in detention
The 15-year-old charged in Friday’s shooting of eight people at Mayfair mall appeared in juvenile court Tuesday, where a commissioner ordered him held in secure detention over requests that he be returned to his parents on GPS monitoring.
In a petition for juvenile delinquency, the teen faces eight felony counts of first-degree reckless injury, and one misdemeanor count of possessing a firearm while under 18.
Court Commissioner J.C. Moore explained to a crowded Zoom meeting that because the teen has been adjudicated delinquent in the past, and is facing new felony charges, the public — and news media — could have access to his hearing.
The Journal Sentinel is not naming the juvenile because he remains charged as a juvenile in juvenile court. Prosecutors could seek to transfer the case to adult court, but Assistant District Attorney Gil Urfer did not indicate at Tuesday’s hearing whether his office would do so.
Moore did honor a defense request that the teen’s face not be shown on the Zoom connection, and ordered news media not to show it otherwise.
Assistant Public Defender Paul Rifelj described the facts included in the petition as “a small sliver, the smallest iota or fraction” of the evidence in the case.
“We have (seen) almost none of it,” he said.
Rifelj noted the teen was found a half mile from home two days after the shooting, and said therefore is not a flight risk. He asked that his client be released to his parents — who were also attending the hearing via Zoom — on GPS monitoring and house arrest. Moore denied the request. “Even with the sliver of evidence in the petition, this court still finds this is an incredibly dangerous series of events,” Moore said. “This was a shooting in a crowded mall a week before the start of the holiday shopping season. Eight people were shot because of some altercation” the teen was allegedly involved in.
“I can’t imagine a more dangerous set of circumstances,” Moore said, and ordered the teen remain in secure juvenile detention.
A plea date was set for Dec. 3 before Circuit Judge Brittany Grayson.
Eight people were wounded in the shooting near Macy’s at Mayfair on Friday afternoon. Dozens of police responded to the scene and the mall was closed on Saturday.
The 15-year-old was arrested Sunday after a traffic stop in Milwaukee.
Two others were also arrested, according to Wauwatosa police, but Tuesday’s hearing did not indicate what roles — if any — they had in the shooting, or mention them at all.
According to the petition filed against the teen:
He and a friend were in the mall when the friend confronted a group of people descending an escalator, yelling before punching one of the group. Witnesses told police that the teen, farther back, “took a shooter’s stance,” and with a handgun drawn from his waistband, began firing.
After the shooting, the teen and his friend — who was struck by the gunfire — stopped in the Enzo store before fleeing the mall.
Surveillance video from Best Buy showed the suspect running from the mall and getting in an orange SUV, an Uber investigators learned had been called by a number “associated with” the teen’s father. It dropped the suspect at home.
When the 15-year-old was arrested Sunday, he was in a car with Illinois license plates with a packed bag and the same Glock 9mm handgun used in the mall shooting.