Accused Wisconsin Parade Killer Says He Feels ‘Demonized’ as Mother Releases Letter

Zachary Stieber
By Zachary Stieber
December 2, 2021US News
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Accused Wisconsin Parade Killer Says He Feels ‘Demonized’ as Mother Releases Letter
Darrell Brooks appears in Waukesha County Court in Waukesha, Wis., on Nov. 23, 2021. (Mark Hoffman/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel/Pool via Getty Images)

The man witnesses say plowed his vehicle into a parade in Wisconsin last month told reporters in his first interview after being charged that he thinks he’s being demonized.

“I just feel like I’m being monster—demonized,” Darrell Brooks told Fox News in a jailhouse talk in Waukesha. He also said he feels “dehumanized.”

Brooks is being held on $5 million bail on six counts of first-degree intentional homicide.

Charging documents say he rammed his red Ford Escape into a Christmas parade on Nov. 21, leaving six dead and some 61 others injured.

Police officers who tried stopping the vehicle said they believe Brooks did what he did intentionally, as did several witnesses.

Brooks could have turned down a side street and avoided striking parade participants but did not, witnesses said.

Authorities have not outlined a possible motive and Brooks offered no details on that front, Fox reported.

Brooks told reporters he was very close with his mother but that she had not stopped by the jail yet.

Dawn Woods, Brooks’s mother, released a letter earlier Wednesday that expressed condolences for those hurt in the attack but also criticizing a lack of mental health care for her son.

NTD Photo
Police tape cordons off a street in Waukesha, Wis., after an SUV plowed into a Christmas parade hitting multiple people on Nov. 21, 2021. (Jeffrey Phelps/AP Photo)

Woods said in the letter, which was sent to media outlets, that her son came from “a loving Christian family” and that he is the grandson of ministers.

“Darrell has suffered from mental health issues since he was very young. In those years he received counseling and was on medication. When he became an adult a decision was made that he no longer suffered from a mental illness. That decision left him with no insurance or financial means to pay for medication and when determind [sic] necessary counseling. Mental illness is not cheap to treat but what’s more important dollars spent on treatment and recouses [sic] or lives lost,” Woods said.

“Instead of offering help and resources to combat the problem a jail cell was given. Over and over again. When mental illness is not properly treated the person becomes sicker and sicker. It doesn’t go away once a person becomes an adult.”

Woods said she and family members are not attempting to make excuses “but we believe what has happened is because he was not given the help and resources he needed.”

Brooks has a lengthy criminal record, with convictions in three states, but was released on $1,000 bail in a different case about two weeks before the parade crash.

A pretrial risk assessment performed before Brooks was released said he was “diagnosed with a serious and persistent illness in which he is not receiving treatment for.”

Brooks faces up to life in prison if convicted. Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853.

From The Epoch Times

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