28th and Concordia shootings, Milwaukee man charged with homicide

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MILWAUKEE – A Milwaukee man is charged with first-degree reckless homicide for an August shooting on the city’s North Side.

Prosecutors said John Bowie, 23, spoke to investigators days after the shooting, admitted he was at the scene and owned a gun — but denied firing the weapon.

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Police were called to the scene around 2:45 a.m. on August 3. The victim, a 40-year-old woman, was found in the front yard of a home with a gunshot wound to the 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. A witness said it started as an argument before turning into a physical fight in the street and in neighborhood yards.

Witnesses said a man — later identified as Bowie — pulled up with a gun in his waistband, prosecutors said. The fight was about to end when a woman began to “physically engage” the victim again, a 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.

According to court filings, a witness told investigators he heard two gunshots before Bowie fled. A second witness said he saw Bowie shoot the victim before running away, and a group of women later returned and appeared to pick up bullet casings from the ground. A third witness also testified that he saw Bowie shoot the victim.

Surveillance video from a doorbell camera captured part of the fight, the complaint says, but only audio of the shooting — which captured two “separate gunshots” coming from the area where the shooting took place. place.

Police interviews

Another witness said Bowie knew the woman who fought the victim. When police interviewed the woman, the complaint says she did not mention that Bowie was at the scene or whether he had a gun. A relative of this woman, who was trying to break up the fight, told a similar story. However, both women later admitted that Bowie was there.

Bowie turned himself in on Aug. 5, and the complaint says 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 separate the women when they fell into the foyer.

Prosecutors said Bowie told investigators he ran into the victim and tried to pull him away from her. She then grabbed his gun by the waistband, he said, and the two fought over the gun. Bowie said the victim pulled the trigger and killed himself, and he dropped everything and ran. He denied firing a gun himself.