Suspect in shooting of Vincent High School student turns himself in to Milwaukee police

A 19-year-old man wanted in the fatal shooting of a Vincent High School student turned himself in Tuesday, Milwaukee police said.

Kiara L. Brown, 18, died after being shot while she was in a car on the city's northwest side early Monday.

Brown and the suspect, whose name has not been released, had a prior relationship and detectives are continuing to investigate if the homicide was domestic violence related, officials said Tuesday.

The man will be referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office for possible charges in the coming days, police said.

Milwaukee Public Schools, which is on spring break this week, will have its crisis response team at Vincent High School when classes resume, district spokesman Andrew Nelson said Tuesday.

The shooting was reported about 5:30 a.m. Monday in the 9800 block of W. Carmen Ave.

"I just feel so sad to think of all the potential that was lost with this young girl," said Carmen Pitre, executive director of the Sojourner Family Peace Center, which serves domestic violence victims in Milwaukee.

"All the gifts she had to bring to the world are now lost, and the suffering of her family, it's too much to bear," she said.

The city's Office of Violence Prevention is monitoring the situation and will work with Milwaukee Public Schools to provide support to students and offer the services of its trauma-response team, said Reggie Moore, the office's director.

"You have two young people whose lives are now tragically changed as a result of this," Moore said. "It's a loss for the community. It's something that's preventable.

"Just as violence is learned, it can be unlearned," he said. "We have to do what we can in our homes, in our streets, in our schools to denormalize violence in every form and in every relationship."

Although authorities have not officially determined if this fatal shooting was an act of domestic violence, federal studies have found dating violence among teens is widespread.

"We underestimate it," Pitre said, adding that it's also not complicated to understand that kids who grow up in violence learn from it.

"If you learn relationships are about control and using violence to solve your problems, then why wouldn't you start to repeat that when you're in intimate relationships?" she said.

In the 2015 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, nearly 12% of high school girls reported physical violence and nearly 16% reported sexual violence from a dating partner in the 12 months before they were surveyed.

For high school boys, more than 7% reported physical violence and about 5% reported sexual violence from a dating partner.

Another report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found among victims of sexual violence, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner, nearly 23% of women and 14% of men first experienced some form of violence by that partner before age 18.

Last January, 18-year-old Stephanie Jones was shot and killed in Milwaukee, and authorities quickly arrested her ex-boyfriend and father of her daughter in the homicide.

The suspect, Hakeem Tucker, then 18, was armed with a gun when he climbed in the window of his former girlfriend's house and was confronted by her father, according to a criminal complaint.

Tucker shot Jones' father before shooting her in the chest, the complaint says.

Tucker is scheduled to go to trial in August on charges of first-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree intentional homicide and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

On average, there's a domestic violence homicide in Wisconsin every week. A federal survey showed more than 700,000 women in Wisconsin have experienced domestic abuse — a number higher than the entire population of Milwaukee.

News of Brown's fatal shooting has spread across social media. Many online noted the young age of the victim and demanded the suspect turn himself in to police.

"Even looking at the commentary on social media, it definitely fosters outrage and sadness and righteous concern about how does this happen and how do we stop this from happening again," Moore said.

RESOURCES

The Sojourner Family Peace Center in Milwaukee operates a 24-hour confidential hotline at (414) 933-2722. The National Domestic Violence Hotline can be reached at (800) 799-7233.

The national hotline also offers an online quiz, "Are you in a healthy relationship?", for anyone to use. To take the quiz, click here.

For a list of domestic violence resources in the Milwaukee area, click here.

Schools or youth-serving agencies in need of programming on teen dating violence or sexual assault prevention can contact Karin Tyler, the city's domestic violence and sexual assault prevention coordinator, at (414) 286-2997.