On the evening of April 8, 2017, a verbal domestic dispute on Milwaukee’s north side escalated into deadly gunfire near 29th and Roosevelt Drive. Twenty-four-year-old Johnathan Evans, a Black / African American man, had returned his son to a relative’s house after shopping; an argument that began there involved Evans, the child’s mother Chiqweeta Coleman, and Donte Lee Brown. According to a witness, Brown kept his hand in his pocket during the confrontation, then walked behind Evans, drew a black semi-automatic pistol from his sweatshirt and fired downward. Evans and a friend tried to run; Brown fired one or two more shots and Evans fell to the ground.

Investigators arrested both Brown and Coleman. Brown, who had a prior attempted first-degree intentional homicide conviction, was charged with first-degree reckless homicide and being a felon in possession of a firearm. Coleman was charged with harboring or aiding a felon after admitting she drove away from the scene with Brown. In August 2018 a jury found Donte Brown guilty of first-degree reckless homicide as a party to a crime and of possession of a firearm by a person convicted of a felony; Coleman had pleaded guilty the previous month to two counts of resisting or obstructing an officer.

The shooting began from a domestic dispute and ended Johnathan Evans’s life. If anyone knew Evans, his movements that day, or saw what happened near 29th and Roosevelt Drive, please share what is known.