17-year-old charged in fatal carjacking
A 17-year-old boy faces up to 391⁄2 years in prison if convicted of stealing a car, fleeing officers, then crashing — resulting in the death of one passenger and severe injuries to another, according to a criminal complaint.
Roman T. Wise of Milwaukee faces one count of vehicle operator eluding a traffic officer and resulting in the death of another; eluding a traffic officer and resulting in great bodily harm; and two counts of eluding a traffic officer and causing damage to property.
Wise will be arraigned Tuesday. His bail is set at $51,000. According to the complaint: About 8 a.m. Dec. 27, three suspects approached a 57-year-old woman while she was washing her 2006 Lexus ES330 at Scrub-a-Dub car wash on Capitol Drive and stole the vehicle.
Later that night, officers located it on Sherman Boulevard, turned on their lights and sirens and began pursuing it. The car disregarded the signals, made a U-turn and sped up.
Police pursued the Lexus, which had its lights off and was traveling at high speed, for about two miles until they lost sight of it on Center Street.
About a minute later, other officers reported a crash at the intersection of Locust Street and W. Fond du Lac Avenue. The officers pursuing the vehicle identified the black Lexus they had been chasing overturned after hitting two other vehicles, a Chevrolet Monte Carlo and a Toyota Rav4. Both vehicles were damaged in the crash.
The officers apprehended Wise, who they found crawling out of the driver’s side rear window.
Remaining inside the Lexus was an unconscious juvenile girl, who was treated for a spinal fracture, a pelvic fracture and lacerations to the liver, spleen and kidney, and an unconscious and unresponsive juvenile boy. The boy was taken to the hospital, where he later died from blunt force injuries to the head from the car accident, according to a medical examiner.