Girl shot, partially paralyzed; Milwaukee man pleads guilty
Jerod Brumfield
MILWAUKEE - A Milwaukee man pleaded guilty Monday to first-degree reckless injury and second-degree recklessly endangering safety for a 2021 shooting that left a girl partially paralyzed.
Jerod Brumfield, 37, will avoid trial after reaching a peal deal with prosecutors; four other felony counts were dismissed.
The shooting happened near 24th and Locust on July 27, 2021. One of the victims, 17-year-old Toniah Williams, suffered a gunshot wound to the right side of her back and had a bullet lodged in the left side of her chest. The second victim had a gunshot wound to his right hand, which was treated with stitches.
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According to a criminal complaint, Williams told detectives she was a passenger in a car and three other people were also in the vehicle. She they had been driving around throwing eggs at cars and encountered Brumfield, whom she has known for years, driving a Cadillac Escalade.
Williams said, when they saw Brumfield, one of the people she was with threw an egg at the Escalade. That's when Brumfield began chasing the car, the complaint states, using his SUV to ram into the back of the car three times. During the chase, Williams told detectives she saw Brumfield fire a shot at their car, and that she then ducked down which is when she was struck by a second gunshot.
Toniah Williams
Williams' family spoke to FOX6 News in September 2021 as the girl recovered, paralyzed from the waist down after the shooting.
"If my daughter is not walking again due to the violence in this city, we got to do something about it," said Dede Rogers, Williams' mother.
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"I’m really hurt that somebody would do that, instead of not knowing if kids were in the car," Shamari Ford, Williams' godmother, said.
Brumfield is scheduled to be sentenced in October.