CRIME

Milwaukee man gets 30 years in 'murder for $20'

Ashley Luthern
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Deanthony Bradley

As Gregory Wood walked toward a table to address a Milwaukee County judge, everyone in the courtroom could read the back of his T-shirt.

"My daughter was murdered for $20."

He sat in a chair next to prosecutor Grant Huebner. As he described the lasting sorrow of losing his 32-year-old daughter, Rebecca Wood, a photo slideshow of her played silently on a screen in front of Deanthony Bradley, the man who pulled the trigger.

"You have ripped out my heart and soul," Wood said. "In killing her, you have also killed me."

Bradley, 21, pleaded guilty in November to first-degree reckless homicide in what the prosecutor described as a "senseless" act in which Wood was treated as "a simple cash machine you can go to and get money from and if they're hurt in the process so be it."

Random target

On July 13, Bradley's uncle provided him a gun, telling him and two other men — William J. Bounds, 26, and Jeremiah A. Flowers,18 — to go rob someone, according to court records.

Flowers pointed at a white car at a stop sign at N. 28th and W. Clarke streets, suggesting the female driver could have "some cheese," or money, the criminal complaint says.

Bradley took the gun and stuck it through the open driver's window, 5 inches from Wood's head. Then, Bradley later told police, Wood grabbed the gun, which fired during a struggle as she tried to drive away. Other witnesses said Bradley shot her.

Her car crashed into a nearby tree. Bounds reached inside the vehicle and rifled through her purse, taking a $20 bill that he would use to buy cigarettes and marijuana, according to the complaint.

Cases remain pending against Bounds and Flowers, who are charged with armed robbery-use of force, and Bradley's uncle, Carlando Anton Mukes, 36, who is charged with possession of a firearm by a felon.

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On Thursday, Wood's family and friends remembered her as an outgoing, loving mother of two children, ages 5 and 14.

"You haven't just ruined (her) children's lives, her father's life, her friends ... you have ruined your family's lives, your own life," said Alicia Schanen, Wood's longtime friend.

Bradley's family thought the uncle "was watching out for the kids" and his house became "the hangout spot," said Bradley's attorney, Christian Thomas.

Instead, Mukes was "essentially running his own crew, providing those adolescents with money, with marijuana and eventually with (oxycodone) as long as they did what he told them to do," Thomas said.

Thomas played a video of Bradley's family describing how they relied on him and his positive traits. Interspliced in the video was footage of Bradley's confession to Milwaukee police and his writing a letter of apology to Wood's family while in police custody.

Thomas repeatedly characterized the shooting as an accident, but Judge Mark A. Sanders disagreed.

"An accident is something that is entirely unforeseeable," Sanders said. "It doesn't take much forethought to understand that when you place a gun 5 inches from someone's head that that gun may go off and if it does, that that person's going to be killed."

Bradley apologized to Wood's family and his own family in court Thursday and said he prayed for absolution.

As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors recommended an unspecified amount of prison time. Wood's family asked for the maximum sentence, which by law was 40 years in prison and 20 years of extended supervision. Bradley's attorney requested a prison sentence of 10 to 15 years.

Sanders handed down a sentence of 30 years in prison followed by 15 years of extended supervision. He made it clear Bradley was receiving less time because he turned himself in, confessed and identified who else was involved.

"As a result of your desire to get whatever money she had, she died," Sanders said.

The effects of such crimes, he said, reach far beyond the families immediately affected.

"People don't want to drive through that area, through many parts of some areas in the city, because of things like this and the fear they feel," Sanders said. "So the consequence of your actions, the ripples of it, extend out very broadly."