From high school star to homeless addict to convicted killer: The Lawrence Ingram story

“Coached by Garmer Currie, and led by 6-5 center Lawrence Ingram … North (Division High School) swept through the tournament and beat Janesville Craig, 65-63, in the championship."

— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story about 1980 boys basketball championship.

“A 55-year-old man was stabbed to death early Sunday morning in the 2000 block of S. 5th St., according to a news release from Milwaukee police. A short time after Victor W. Rogers was found dead, a 54-year-old man was arrested, police said.”

— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Sunday, Nov. 5. 2017.

The homeless woman who spoke only Burmese became agitated as police took a statement from the homeless man who spoke only Spanish.

The man described what he witnessed at the encampment under the freeway overpass. The woman made a slashing motion across her throat, then pointed toward the tall man across the street from Kosciuszko Park.

Two officers confronted the 6-foot-5-inch man with blood on his trousers and asked for his identification.

It was the last time Lawrence Ingram stood a free man — the end of a decades-long tailspin that began at the height of high school athletic glory, and ended in drug addiction, homelessness, homicide and prison.

“It was like he stopped chasing his dreams and started chasing drugs,” Kevin Ingram said of his younger brother. "It was kind of like he was afraid of success.”  

On April 20, Lawrence Ingram was sentenced to 20 years in prison for first-degree reckless homicide in the November 2017 killing of Victor W. Rogers at a squalid homeless encampment on Milwaukee’s south side.

A month earlier, Ingram’s older brother picked him up from the encampment to drive him to his former basketball team’s induction into the North Division High School Athletic Hall of Fame.

"He could have been an outstanding NBA player or a general in the Army," Kevin said. "The lesson here is we all have the power within ourselves to make good choices or to make bad choices." 

Lawrence was raised by his grandmother on Milwaukee’s near north side, where he attended Hopkins elementary and Fulton middle school.

He cut his basketball chops on the Columbia playground, at the corner of N. 14th and W. Chambers streets. It's been the birthplace of some of the best players in the city, his brother said.

“He was tall, and could compete with the older players,” Kevin Ingram remembered. "Everybody earns their stripes on playground basketball.”

Both Lawrence and Kevin played high school basketball, Kevin at Rufus King and Lawrence at North Division, but the two never played against each other.

“I was a bench warmer,” Kevin acknowledged. “But everybody admired and respected the way he played the game.”

The North Division boys varsity basketball team reached the WIAA state tournament six times from 1957-'74, taking home three second-place trophies and a consolation title.

But in 1980, Lawrence helped lead the team to its first and only state championship in a hard-fought game against Joseph Craig High School of Janesville. North prevailed, 65-63.

“It was one of those things you read about in sports when there is just no doubt in their minds and there is no panic,” Robert Kern, an assistant coach for the team that season and later the head coach, told the Journal Sentinel in October before the hall of fame induction.

Lawrence averaged 19.4 points a game that season, earning a basketball scholarship to North Iowa Area Community College, where he played forward and excelled for two seasons.

He transferred to Murray State University in Kentucky his junior year, finally breaking into Division I college basketball.

“He had made the big leagues,” his brother said.

But it didn’t sit well with Lawrence that he didn’t get the playing time he did at North Iowa.

“One year away from getting his college degree, he dropped out and went to the Army,” Kevin said.

While still in high school, Lawrence had begun drinking alcohol and smoking marijuana, his brother said. He liked to party and get high. He liked the limelight.

Lawrence was discharged from the Army after about a year for medical reasons that he kept to himself, his brother said.

From then on, Lawrence was “up and down” on drugs, “homeless one minute and in a good job the next,” Kevin remembered.

The good jobs included a stint at Quad/Graphics Inc., where Lawrence worked for months as a temporary employee before being hired full time, his brother said.

“Two days later, he didn’t show up for work,” Kevin said. “It was an automatic termination.”

For the most part Lawrence worked as a neighborhood handyman on Milwaukee’s north side, staying with his brother, girlfriends or friends, his brother said.

He eventually began to abuse cocaine, and his criminal record began in 1988 with a conviction for robbery.

Through the years he amassed criminal, jail and prison records for drug and theft offenses, and his final release from jail was in 2014, according to state court records.

After being kicked out of several shelters for rule violations, Lawrence began living on the street, though he still went through periods of sobriety and employment.

In the summer of 2008, he worked at Patrick Cudahy before once again succumbing to the temptation of getting high, his brother said.

“Drugs will keep you wanting more to the point where you’ll give up a good job to chase your habit,” Kevin said.

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Lawrence’s chase led him to life under the freeway overpass near S. 5th and W. Becher streets. That's where a criminal complaint and a Milwaukee County medical examiner’s report pick up the story:

Police found Victor Rogers with multiple stab wounds to his face, neck and torso at the top of an embankment, where they were called about 6 a.m. on Nov. 5.

A witness told officers he saw Ingram at the homeless encampment holding “a broad-bladed implement like what a roofer would use to pry off shingles.”

Ingram was upset, accusing Rogers of stealing $200 from him before punching Rogers several times, knocking him to the ground.

After demanding his money, Ingram began stabbing Rogers with such fury that blood spray was found on a concrete wall near Rogers’ body as it lay supine on a pile of blankets.

"He didn't deserve to die like that," his brother Ralph Rogers told Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Carolina Stark at Ingram's sentencing. Ralph described his brother as a good man and loving brother who was afflicted with a physical disability.

"I don't understand how (Ingram) could do this."

While insisting he killed Rogers in self-defense, Ingram told Rogers' family he was sorry for his death.

"To ask for forgiveness would be like a slap in their face, so I won’t ask," Ingram said.

"I haven’t even been able to forgive myself."

Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.