Former police officer Dominque Heaggan-Brown has been charged with first degree reckless homicide in the August shooting death of Sylville Smith—which sparked days of rioting in Milwaukee.
New details about the case were released this week in a criminal complaint. The cops’ body camera also captured the deadly encounter.
Heaggan-Brown and another officer were chasing Smith in between two homes on August 13, after the 23-year-old attempted to flee from a traffic stop. He reportedly turned toward the officers with a gun in his hand, “raising it upward”. At some point, however, he’d apparently thrown the weapon over a fence, into a yard. Around that time, he was shot in the right upper arm, the complaint said. Further review of the body cam footage showed that Smith was unarmed at the time of the second shot, which was fired into his chest.
WISN reports that Heaggan-Brown was fired from the dept. back in October, after he was charged with sexual assault in an unrelated case. A criminal complaint obtained by WGN-TV said, Brown and another man went to a bar the night of Aug. 14 “where they drank heavily and watched TV coverage of the riots.” The man told investigators that he woke up later that night to Heaggan-Brown sexually assaulting him.
If Heaggan-Brown is convicted in the Smith case, he could face up to 60 years in prison.
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