A Community's Nightmare: The 2021 Waukesha Parade Attack

Waukesha, Milwaukee, the third most populated county in the state of Wisconsin, and known as “Guitar Town” because they are the home of Les Paul, pioneer of the electric guitar. And they have a fantastic annual tradition. Every year the city hosts a festive Christmas parade to showcase local talent, community projects and to mark the official start of the holiday season. This tradition has gone on for over sixty years and only ever took a break in 2020 because of the pandemic. 2021 saw the much awaited return of the parade, and with it came a focus on bringing the community back together after the uncertain and troubling times that we had all just been through. The theme that year really cemented that feeling and the hope that everyone had that the pandemic was behind us. 

The theme was Comfort and Joy.

You can listen to this episode here:https://www.10minutemurder.com/a-communitys-nightmare-the-2021-waukesha-parade-attack/

But around four thirty on the evening of the Christmas Parade 2021, a red Ford Escape SUV came hurtling down the street. A police officer, noticing that the car was heading straight for the parade, tried to stop it. He first banged on the hood and tried to get the driver’s attention and then he opened fire.

But the driver drove on, bursting through barricades and swinging the car side to side, causing the number of hit victims to rise much higher than it would have been if he had simply driven straight through.

As the crowds scrambled, some of them screaming, some of them crying in pain and in shock, the driver sat in his seat, calm and composed, seemingly oblivious to the growing carnage around him.

That man was thirty-nine-year-old Darrell Edward Brooks Jr, a born and raised Milwaukee resident with a troubling past. His criminal record dated back to 1999, when Darrell was only seventeen, and every year seemed to bring with it a new entry.

Part of the reason behind Darrell’s extensive criminal record came from his mental health. He’d been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder at the age of twelve and had been living with it ever since. After his diagnosis, Darrell dropped out of high school and was arrested shortly after for substantial battery. This was a felony and got Darrell a two-year sentence in jail with a three-year probationary period to follow.

In 2006, he was sentenced to 12–36 months for sexual seduction after he got a fifteen-year-old girl pregnant in Sparks, Nevada. A warrant from Sparks for further sexual charges was outstanding for his arrest at the time that he was on his way to the parade in 2021.

By 2020, Darrell’s crimes had turned more violent. He was arrested and charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety and for being a felon in possession of a firearm after an incident where he allegedly shot at his nephew. Darrell had supposedly reached for the gun after a dispute over a cell phone.

Darrell was actually still waiting to go to trial for this case, but the ongoing pandemic had stretched the court system and his trial was delayed. He was released on a reduced bail for only 500 dollars at the beginning of 2021.

Only a few months after that, however, Darrell was in trouble with the law again. This time, a witness had overheard Darrell beating up his ex-girlfriend in their room next door at the Country Hearth Inn. Allegedly, during this assault, Darrell flashed his gun to his ex-girlfriend in warning, but the witness that reported the incident didn’t see that for himself. Instead, the witness confronted Darrell, which resulted in another arrest and Darrell spending another night behind bars.

Darrell was due in court for this case as well, but he would be arrested again before that could happen.

On November second, 2021, Darrell attacked his ex-girlfriend yet again. This time he punched her and then ran her over with his car in a chilling foreshadowing of what was to come only weeks later. He was arrested and charged again with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, but he posted his 1000 dollar bail and was out on November 19th.

Now only forty-eight hours stood before him and the parade where he would turn so many lives upside down.

After plowing through the crowds at the parade, Darrell abandoned his truck and fled the scene on foot. He slipped through the cracks in the resulting chaos and managed to make it away unseen. He then knocked on a random front door and pretended to be homeless.

The homeowner who answered the door took pity on Darrell. The homeowner hadn’t heard about the attack on the parade just yet, and so he trusted Darrell. He invited him in, offered his phone so that Darrell could call an Uber, made him a sandwich and lent him a coat.

But he realized that something was wrong when the police showed up on his doorstep. After that, the homeowner asked Darrell to leave, and Darrell surrendered himself to the police without a fight.

Residents and law enforcement were left in total disbelief and shock over what had happened. They first, just like the homeowner had that evening, tried to give Darrell the benefit of the doubt. Maybe it was possible that this had all been an accident. Maybe he’d been running from someone and had driven into the crowd in a panic. It certainly looked like he didn’t actually know anyone in the parade and therefore hadn’t been targeting someone in particular.

But it was Darrell’s own actions that spoke against him.

Upon entering the crowd, Darrell had swung his car from side to side in a zigzag pattern, and the prosecution argued that that could have meant only one thing. Darrell had intentionally been trying to hit as many people as possible.

Five people died at the scene, most of them being women who had been in the parade as part of the dancing group called the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies. Sixty-two people were injured, and around seventeen children were amongst them. The final nail in Darrell’s coffin came days later, when an eight-year-old boy died of his injuries.

At court, Darrell and his family tried to defend his actions. They argued that Darrell wasn’t responsible for his actions because of his bipolar disorder. Darrell’s grandmother testified that his condition was going untreated because Darrell didn’t have insurance to cover his medical bills.

But the courts disagreed. 

Speaking with tears in her eyes, Waukesha Circuit Court Judge Jennifer Dorrow addressed the defendant. “There are times when evil people do bad things – there is no medication or treatment for a heart that is bent on evil. Some people unfortunately choose a path of evil, and Mr Brooks, I think you are one of those people.”

Judge Dorrow then imposed six consecutive life sentences, one each for every victim that Darrell killed that day, without the possibility of parole. For each of the sixty-one counts of reckless endangerment, a charge that Darrell had already faced twice before, she sentenced him to 762 years in prison with 305 years of supervised parole. For the six counts of hit-and-run that came from the six victims that he’d killed, she gave him a 150-year sentence that was to run concurrently with the 762 he was to serve for the previous charges.

Judge Dorrow's sentencing was read to massive applause in the courtroom. With the number of years Darrell was to serve, and with no possibility that he would ever be paroled, the community of Waukesha believed that justice had been done. 

But there was still kindness to spread so that the healing could truly begin for his actions that day had touched. A GoFundMe campaign raised an initial 900,000 dollars for victims of the attack. A further 1.8 million dollars were raised for the United for Waukesha Community Fund, and local contractors volunteered their services to install wheelchair ramps for those left injured after the attack for free.

Just four months later and the total amount raised to help the victims and their families stood at 6.2 million, proving just how eager the community and the country were to do what they could to help and ease the pain and suffering that had been inflicted upon them.