Guilty verdict in Wis. parade attack
Man killed 6 with vehicle rampage at Christmas festival
Darrell Brooks was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree intentional homicide in the deaths of six people he struck with his car on a terrifying rampage through a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, in 2021.
The verdict, delivered by a jury in Waukesha County, followed a chaotic threeweek trial in which Brooks represented himself.
Brooks, 40, was found guilty of all 76 criminal charges, including 61 counts of recklessly endangering safety, six counts of hit-andrun causing death, two counts of bail jumping and one count of misdemeanor battery. Dozens of people at the parade were injured in the attack.
In Wisconsin, conviction of first-degree intentional homicide carries a mandatory life sentence.
The verdict, delivered after nearly three hours of deliberations, brought to an end a circuslike trial filled with disruptions by Brooks. He frequently interrupted Judge Jennifer Dorow of Waukesha County Circuit Court, objected when witnesses referred to him by his name and ranted that his rights were being violated.
Brooks has declared that he is a “sovereign citizen,” claiming that laws and legal proceedings of the United States do not apply to him. Dorow repeatedly ordered Brooks removed to a separate courtroom because of his behavior. While the verdicts were read, Brooks looked down at his lap and silently rested his forehead on his folded hands.
In a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Susan Opper, the Waukesha County district attorney, said that she was satisfied
by the guilty verdicts and believed that Brooks had been held accountable for his actions.
“Although the defendant devastated our community, the people of the city of Waukesha, Waukesha County and beyond demonstrated tremendous resiliency,” she said, adding that Brooks faces “six consecutive life sentences plus 859 years of confinement.”
For Waukesha residents, the trial painfully revisited a day that had traumatized the city.
The attack occurred on a Sunday afternoon in downtown Waukesha, a quiet, prosperous suburb of 72,000 residents west of Milwaukee that celebrated the holidays with a Christmas parade that included marchers, floats and dancers along the
town’s historic Main Street.
The parade was disrupted in a sudden, violent fashion by the arrival of a maroon Ford Escape SUV, driven by Brooks at a high speed as he was fleeing a nearby domestic disturbance. Brooks toppled barriers, then turned directly toward the parade, charging into the spectators, dancers and marching band musicians, and ignoring pleas to stop.
Brooks fled the scene but was arrested in a residential neighborhood in Waukesha on the evening of the attack.
Throughout the first two weeks of the trial, prosecutors showed multiple video clips of Brooks driving his car into the parade and called witnesses who described the horrific scene that had unfolded.
Adam Bonesteel, who was driving a parade float that day, recounted seeing Brooks’ vehicle veering around and striking Jane Kulich, 52. Her body flew up onto the hood of Brooks’ car, he said, fell to the ground and then was run over by Brooks again. She was one of the six who died from the attack.
“At that point, I was just focused on the body on the ground,” Bonesteel said. “But I remember hearing the roar of the engine again.”
The dead included an 8-year-old boy and three women who were members of the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies, a troupe that was performing in the parade.
This year, Brooks indicated that he would plead not guilty by reason of mental defect, suggesting that he was not mentally competent at the time of the parade attack, but he later withdrew that plea.
When he spoke in his own defense in court last week, he said that he had not planned to drive into the crowd. “There’s always two sides to every story,” he told the jury. “There’s only been one side told to this story.”
Witnesses called by Brooks testified they saw the maroon SUV at the parade, swerving, honking and speeding through the crowd.
On Tuesday, during closing arguments, Brooks spoke of feeling “powerless” since last November, as he has heard himself described as a person who acted with rage and anger, without regard for human life. He said that his family has been ostracized and he has prayed alone in his jail cell. But he insisted that his intentions were not to hurt anyone, citing testimony from witnesses who heard him honk the horn of his SUV during the attack.
“I have never heard of someone intentionally trying to hurt someone while attempting to blow their horn or attempting to alert people of their presence,” Brooks said.
In her closing argument, Opper said she could not say why Brooks had driven his car into the parade and killed and injured so many innocent spectators. She reminded the jury that after he had struck people with his car, he continued to drive into the crowd without stopping and killed even more spectators.
“There is overwhelming evidence that this was an intentional act by Darrell Brooks and an act with utter disregard for human life,” she said, adding: “There’s no doubt Darrell Brooks is responsible for this.”