MILWAUKEE (AP) - The teenage driver fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy at Milwaukee’s lakefront was a suspect in an exchange of gunfire with a man one day earlier, police said Wednesday.
Terry Williams, 19, died Tuesday at Froedtert Hospital in Milwaukee. He had been on life support since he was shot in the head Sunday night after driving an SUV over a curb at the city’s crowded Lake Michigan shoreline as he tried to elude a deputy trying to make a traffic stop, authorities said. One of two passengers in the SUV was wounded in the shooting.
Milwaukee police said Wednesday that Williams and another suspect exchanged words with a man who was in a vehicle parked at a business Saturday afternoon and threatened him with a rifle. The man drove away but heard gunshots fired in his direction and saw the two men were following him, according to police. The man, who was armed, said the suspect, later identified as Williams, fired additional shots that hit his vehicle after he shot back at the two men. The second man in Saturday’s incident has been arrested, police said.
At a news conference Monday, Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. said a deputy had been pursuing Williams Sunday night at the lakefront for failing to obey a traffic sign. It was not clear whether the deputy in pursuit was aware Williams was wanted for questioning in Saturday’s incident. Video posted on social media shows Williams’ driving onto the median on a lakefront thoroughfare crowded with people.
Deputy Michael Truax, 32, was on foot and fired the shots that killed Williams and wounded Paula McEwen, 32. Truax, hired in August, has been placed on administrative duty while Waukesha County sheriff’s officials investigate the shooting.
An autopsy on Williams was done Wednesday, but its results have been sealed while the investigation continues, according to the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office.
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