'I miss my sister': Man sentenced to 60 years in killing of 11-year-old Ta'Niyla Parker
Ta’Niyla Parker wanted to be a lawyer or an architect.
She once built an intricate cardboard dollhouse, complete with a staircase, for her younger sister.
She already was planning her Sweet Sixteen birthday party.
She had hopes. She had dreams. She had a future.
On Oct. 2, 2021, an impulsive man with a gun ended it all, firing in a fit of road rage at a car that carried Ta’Niyla and her family, including her 5-year-old sister.
She was 11.
Her death sparked outrage. Activists held signs declaring “Stop Killing Our Children” near North Sherman Boulevard and West Burleigh Street, where the shooting occurred. Then-Mayor Tom Barrett convened a news conference and said her death “breaks my heart.”
Then the attention faded, even as investigators quickly built a case against Antonius Trotter, now 24, who was charged a month after the shooting.
A jury convicted Trotter for killing Ta’Niyla, wounding her sister and having a gun illegally. A judge sentenced him Thursday afternoon to 60 years in prison during an emotional hearing.
“My mom told me if I want to see my daughter, I’m going to have to forgive this man,” said Talea Hairston, Ta’Niyla’s mother.
“I don’t have nothing in my heart to forgive him,” she said, sobbing. “A year is gone and I try and I try, every time I look at this man, it hurts. I don’t even take my daughter anywhere because I’m scared. I’m scared.”
“You took somebody very, very, very special,” she said.
'Horrific' body camera footage showed officers helping the wounded sisters
The case against Trotter played out during a 4-day trial that ended last month.
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Laura Crivello recounted the evidence against him during sentencing.
The girls had been in a car with their mother and her boyfriend, who was driving. They were going to the girls’ grandmother’s house after leaving Chuck E. Cheese.
The family was driving north on Sherman Boulevard and got into the far-right lane as if to turn onto Locust Street, but at the last moment, the driver kept going straight and passed to the right of another car.
When they got to the intersection of Burleigh Street, someone in another car fired 11 shots into their vehicle. The boyfriend drove straight to District 7 where Officers Kyle Koety and Nicholaus Waszak and others treated the girls until Fire Department paramedics arrived.
Officers’ body cameras captured the “horrific” scene, the judge said. Earlier in the hearing, prosecutor Michael Schindhelm described how the footage showed Ta’Niyla being helped by the officers.
“It seems like everything’s going to be fine because she’s sitting up and she’s talking and there’s not that much blood because it’s not bleeding on the outside,” Schindhelm said. “But instead, she’s bleeding on the inside.”
Ta’Niyla and her sister were loaded into separate ambulances, and their mother said goodbye. Investigators had asked her to stay behind to give more information about what had just happened.
Ta’Niyla died a short time after arriving at the hospital.
Detectives built the case using surveillance footage, other technology
Surveillance footage played a key role in the case.
Milwaukee police used footage from pole cameras and nearby businesses to pinpoint where the gunfire came from: a dark sedan with tinted windows and a distinctive white decal on the rear bumper. The video showed muzzle flashes coming from the rear passenger window, which matched what witnesses reported.
A city-owned automated license plate reader in the area captured the car’s plate which was registered to Trotter's older brother, Shawn Williams.
Detectives spoke with Williams' long-time girlfriend and checked for security video in the area surrounding her home.
Police pulled footage from the night of the shooting and saw four men get into a purple Mercedes with a distinctive sticker on the bumper at 8:35 p.m. and return to the house at 9:53 p.m. — covering the same time period as the shooting.
Detectives interviewed two men who admitted being in the car that night and indicated Trotter was the shooter. Those men testified during the trial. They said the car’s owner, Williams, was driving and his brother, Trotter, was in the rear passenger seat.
Investigators also analyzed Trotter’s phone records, which showed his phone moving from his brother's partner's house to the shooting scene in the same time window. ShotSpotter, a system of sensors that pinpoints the sound of gunfire, also picked up the shots at the same time and place, and investigators recovered multiple casings at the scene that appeared to have been fired from the same gun.
It took jurors less than four hours to convict Trotter.
No one else in the car was believed to have fired a gun that night and no one else was charged in the shooting of Ta'Niyla and her sister.
Williams, 38, is now facing charges in an unrelated shooting.
Judge decried shooter's lengthy criminal history and a younger sister spoke from the heart
At sentencing, Trotter maintained his innocence and said he would appeal the verdict.
“I feel like I didn’t get a fair side at my trial,” he said, after apologizing to the victims, his family and the court.
Trotter has a criminal history dating to the age of 10, when he was arrested in an attempted robbery where the victim was bashed in the head with a rock, requiring 10 staples. In the years since he was convicted of armed robbery and carjacking and sent to prison. He was on extended supervision at the time of Ta’Niyla’s homicide.
“Your criminal history is one of the most terrifying ones I’ve seen because it shows a pattern of continued escalation of violence and no care for anyone else,” Crivello said.
Before handing down the sentence, the judge heard from several more of Ta’Niyla’s relatives, including her younger sister who was wounded in the shooting. Her family declined to speak with the Journal Sentinel on Thursday.
The girl sat next to the prosecutor, her puffer jacket printed with Looney Tunes characters. Her voice was soft and clear.
“I would like to say that I miss my sister and that I wish he could be in jail.”
The judge asked if she wanted to share anything else.
The girl paused.
“I miss my sister so much.”
Contact Ashley Luthern at ashley.luthern@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @aluthern.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ta'Nylia Parker's killer Antonius Trotter sentenced to 60 years
