28th and Concordia shooting, Milwaukee man charged with murder

MILWAUKEE – A Milwaukee man is charged with first-degree manslaughter for an August shooting on the city’s north side.

Prosecutors said 23-year-old John Bowie spoke to investigators days after the shooting and admitted he was at the scene and had a gun on him – but denied firing the weapon.

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Police were called to the scene around 2:45 a.m. on August 3rd. 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 stemmed from a fight between two groups of women. A witness said it started with an argument before escalating into physical confrontations on the street and in yards in the neighborhood.

Witnesses said a man – later identified as Bowie – drove up with a gun in his waistband, prosecutors said. The fight broke up just as a woman began “physically attacking” 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 as he fell.

According to court documents, a witness told investigators he heard two gunshots before Bowie ran away. A second witness said they saw Bowie shoot the victim before running away, and a group of women returned later and appeared to be picking up bullet casings from the ground. A third witness also said he saw Bowie shoot the victim.

Surveillance video from a doorbell camera captured part of the fight, the complaint says, but only audio recordings of the shooting — with two “clear gunshots” recorded from the area where the shooting occurred.

Police interviews

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

Bowie turned himself in on August 5 and the complaint says he admitted to being there at the time of the shooting. He said the victim tried to hit the woman he knew in the head with a gun and he tried to tear the women apart as they fell into the fire pit.

Prosecutors said Bowie told investigators he fell on top of the victim and tried to pull her away. She then took the gun from his waistband, he said, and the two fought over the gun. Bowie said the victim pulled the trigger and shot himself, and he dropped everything and ran. He denied ever firing a weapon himself.