28th and Concordia shooting, Milwaukee man accused of reckless homicide
John Bowie
MILWAUKEE - A Milwaukee man is accused of first-degree reckless homicide for an August shooting on the city's north side.
Prosecutors said 23-year-old John Bowie spoke to investigators days after the shooting, admitted he was at the scene and had a gun – but denied firing the weapon.
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Police were called to the scene around 2:45 a.m. on Aug. 3. The victim, a 40-year-old woman, was found in the front yard of a home with a gunshot wound to her chest. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
According to a criminal complaint, witnesses told investigators the shooting followed a fight between two groups of women. One witness said it started as an argument before it turned into a physical fight in the street and in yards in the neighborhood.
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Witnesses said a man – later identified as Bowie – pulled up with a gun in his waistband, prosecutors said. The fight was breaking up when a woman began to "physically engage" the victim again, one witness said. The two women fell onto a portable fire pit, and the witness said Bowie was trying to pick one of them up, when he fell.
Court filings said one witness told investigators they heard two gunshots before Bowie ran off. A second witness said they saw Bowie shoot the victim before running off, and a group of women later returned and appeared to collect bullet casings from the ground. A third witness also said they saw Bowie shoot the victim.
Surveillance video from a doorbell camera captured a portion of the fight, the complaint states, but only audio of the shooting – which captured two "distinct gunshots" coming from the area where the shooting took place.
Police interviews
Another witness said Bowie knew the woman who was fighting the victim. When police interviewed that woman, the complaint notes she did not mention that Bowie was at the scene or whether he had a gun. A relative of that woman, who was trying to break up the fight, told a similar story. However, both women later admitted Bowie was there.
Bowie turned himself in on Aug 5, and the complaint states he admitted he was there at the time of the shooting. He said the victim was trying to hit the woman he knew in the head with a gun, and he was trying to pull the women apart when they fell into the fire pit.
Prosecutors said Bowie told investigators that he fell on top of the victim and tried to pull the victim away from her. She then grabbed his gun from his waistband, he said, and the two struggled over the weapon. Bowie said the victim pulled the trigger and shot herself, and he dropped everything and ran. He denied ever firing a gun himself.