LIFETIME OF TROUBLE
'Parade killer' sent to psych hospital at 12
The man who turned a smalltown Christmas parade into a blood-soaked nightmare that left six people dead has spent more than half of his life in a revolving door of violence, drug abuse and incarceration.
Darrell Brooks, 39, allegedly plowed his red Ford Escape into revelers at an annual Christmas celebration in Waukesha, Wis., on Sunday, but his life of crime started decades ago at age 17.
Over the next two decades, Brooks would wreak havoc across three states as he racked up convictions for abusing his partners, raping and impregnating a teenager and a streak of other violent crimes.
A review of his history — patched together from court documents, criminal records, interviews and public records — reveals that all along the way, not a single social safety net caught him until it was too late.
Brooks was just 11 when he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression while growing up in the inner city of Milwaukee without his father, court records show.
He was admitted to a mental hospital at 12 and attempted suicide numerous times in his early years after losing his grandmother and watching his father abuse his mom, papers say.
“I didn’t have a father growing up, so my mom was stuck raising me and my older sister. We were on welfare for most of my childhood,” Brooks wrote in a 2007 letter to a judge.
“My father was an alcoholic who was very abusive to my mom. I grew up in the inner city full of drugs and prostitution.”
Brooks claimed in the letter that his mother, a Christian woman with Southern roots, steered him away from trouble on the streets, but despite her best efforts, he would go on to follow in his father’s footsteps.
He became an addict, a domestic abuser prone to violence and threats — and used a vehicle as a weapon numerous times, according to authorities.
Brooks lamented that he knew what it was like “to have your own flesh and blood walk out on you.” But by then, Brooks had already abandoned his firstborn son before the child was 3 months old.
“He disappeared,” the child’s mother told The Post. “I’ve done all of this on my own, raised my child by myself.”
After Brooks was charged with his first felony in 1999 for battery, he was sentenced to three years of probation. He was then busted on misdemeanor charges in 2002 and 2003.
In 2005 he moved to Reno, Nev., for a fresh start, but within a year, he was accused of raping and impregnating an underage girl.
He pleaded guilty and was ordered not to contact the victim — an order he repeatedly violated by calling the teen using a stolen phone card and confronting her at a bus stop, landing him back in jail where he served just 129 days, records show.
Between 2009 and 2011, Brooks was in and out of jail for a series of violent crimes.
“During a traffic stop, a Milwaukee police officer jumped inside Brooks’ car, fearing he was about to be run over,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported of a 2011 incident.
Eventually, the officer stopped the car and removed the keys as Brooks ran off. He was found hiding in a children’s playhouse on the same block and was taken into custody.
In 2016, Brooks was busted again for failing to register as a sex offender, and in July 2020, he fired a gun at his nephew during a fight over a cellphone.
Officers soon found Brooks with a stolen Beretta 9mm handgun and a clear plastic baggie with three multicolored methamphetamine pills inside, records show.
Brooks was facing 10 years behind bars for the crime, but when the court was unable to guarantee him a speedy trial due to a case backlog and corona virus related delays, he was sprung in February on $500 bail.
Brooks then went to Georgia, where he was arrested for misdemeanor battery three months after he got out of jail, Waukesha prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Brooks made his way back to Wisconsin, where his penchant for violence bubbled up again during a stay at a motel in Milwaukee with his ex-girlfriend.
Brooks allegedly accosted the woman, and then went after her in his Ford Escape SUV as she fled.
He caught up with her at a nearby gas station and demanded she get in his car, court records state. When she refused, he struck her in the face and then ran her over with his SUV, leaving the woman bruised, bloodied and with “tire tracks on her left pants leg,” police said.
The ex-girlfriend later told cops that Brooks had threatened to kill her on multiple occasions and had once tried to choke her, according to police reports obtained by the Journal Sentinel.
Brooks was charged with recklessly endangering safety, bail jumping, battery and disorderly conduct in the incident but was given an “inappropriately low” bail of $1,000, Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm later said.
On Sunday, Waukesha cops were alerted to another domestic disturbance involving Brooks and the ex, but by the time they could respond, it was too late.
Brooks drove off and barreled toward the parade, smashed through barricades, plowed into revelers and marchers with “no emotion on his face,” police said.
He left six people dead — the youngest being 8-year-old Jackson Sparks — and dozens injured, with many still hospitalized on Thursday.
Brooks was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide, but he will likely be hit with a sixth count following the death of Jackson.
The homicide counts each carry a potential sentence of life behind bars without parole.
Additional reporting by Dan Good