Milwaukee man guilty in Laylah Petersen homicide

A jury convicted Carl Barrett Jr. of first-degree reckless homicide Thursday in the fatal shooting of 5-year-old Laylah Petersen.

It also found Barrett guilty of recklessly endangering the safety of Laylah's grandmother, grandfather and sister who were present during the shooting.

Laylah's family applauded the investigators and prosecutor who tried the case and left the courtroom without speaking to reporters. Prosecutor Sara Beth Hill said the family sounded pleased to get "the justice that they were seeking."

Hill also praised the investigation by the Milwaukee Police Department, specifically detectives Katherine Spano, Erik Villarreal and Rosemarie Galindo, and said she hoped the verdict sends a message to people to think before taking action with a gun.

"The individual who kind of spearheaded this (shooting) ... he was angry about something, maybe justifiably," she said. "He was emotional and upset, but I think had he maybe had time to reflect on those emotions and taken a pause, maybe this wouldn't have happened."

Driver in Laylah Petersen killing testifies

The verdicts came after a closing argument in which Hill said Laylah died from a bullet fired in a wildly reckless effort to exact revenge — an effort that missed its target.

Barrett was all too willing to participate in the vigilante justice, even though "it wasn't his beef," she said in her closing argument Thursday morning.

"Carl Barrett was the backup man, the muscle," Hill told the jury, citing other times police said he'd gladly deployed his distinctive 9mm Hi-Point gun on the behalf of others.

On the evening of Nov. 6, 2014, she said, Barrett, 21, was helping Arlis Gordon, 24, who was upset because a jury had found a man charged with killing Gordon's half brother not guilty earlier in the day. Gordon and Barrett thought they were shooting up the home of the acquitted defendant's girlfriend.

But it actually was Laylah's grandparents' house, in the 5000 block of N. 58th St., where she was on her grandfather's lap in the living room when one of the rounds hit her in the forehead.

"We could have had a quadruple homicide," Hill said, referring to others in the room who miraculously escaped serious injury.

For the next several months, Hill said, those involved maintained "a conspiracy of silence," until a relative of a man who gave Gordon a gun sensed something was wrong and went to police.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Christopher Hartley suggested anyone could have used the gun prosecutors say Barrett always carried. He challenged the credibility of two key state witnesses: Paul Farr, who said he drove Gordon and Barrett to the scene and back; and Divonte Forbes, Farr's cousin, who said he lent his camouflaged gun to Gordon.

Farr, 25, had lied to and misled investigators until after he was charged in Laylah's death. He then agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in exchange for his testimony.

Forbes, 23, wasn't even charged in the case, but reached a plea agreement in other cases, and testified to being in the car, and lending his gun to Gordon. Gordon also pleaded guilty in Laylah's shooting, but did not testify.

Hartley said it was more likely that Forbes had all the guns and he joined Gordon in shooting at the wrong house, because Forbes had shot up a different house, over a different dispute, earlier the same day. He also questioned why Gordon, who had been contacting Farr and Forbes all day, would suddenly ask Barrett to accompany him on the shooting.

The jury began deliberating late Thursday morning.