Six people found dead with gunshot wounds in a Milwaukee duplex have been identified while police continue Tuesday to look for the person or people responsible for the slayings.
Three of the six, who ranged in age from 23 to 49, lived at the residence where the bodies were found Sunday afternoon, according Milwaukee County Medical Examiners Office records.
All six had gunshot wounds, Milwaukee police said. They include Michelle Williams 49, Donta Williams, 44, Donald Smith, 43, Charles Hardy, 42, Javoni Liddell, 31, and Caleb Jordan, 23. The Williamses and Smith lived at the duplex, according to the medical examiner.
Milwaukee police responded about 3:45 p.m. Sunday to assist with a welfare check at the home where five bodies were initially discovered. The medical examiner tweeted early Monday that the body of an additional person, a man, was recovered from the home.
Their deaths were being investigated as homicides, police said. Investigators said they continue to look for “unknown suspects.”
Alice Cartwright has lived in the neighborhood since 1993 and told the Journal Sentinel it is plagued by gun violence. Even if she had heard gunshots in the area recently she said she wouldn’t think much of it, especially if there was no accompanying police response.
“It really happens so often, so I really didn’t pay that much attention,” she said.
The neighborhood, known as Park West, has been hit hard by violence during the coronavirus pandemic, which experts and local officials have tied to a skyrocketing homicide rate locally and nationally.
In 2019, 13 people were shot, one fatally, in the neighborhood, but the following year 65 people were shot in Park West, nine fatally, according to the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission.
