Milwaukee County Supervisor Sheldon Wasserman said he’s seeking answers from the sheriff’s office following a series of TMJ4 investigative reports.
After watching the latest chapter of “Ghosted’ with his wife, Wasserman said he asked sheriff’s officials to address several questions raised by the station’s reporting on a mysterious and unsolved hit-and-run case.
A spokesperson for County Executive David Crowley also released a statement that said the reports are concerning but that his office doesn’t have any authority over the sheriff’s office.
“While the reports around this situation are concerning, the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office is an independent law enforcement agency. Outside of approving their budget, the Office of the Milwaukee County Executive holds no authority or disciplinary oversight over the Sheriff’s Office.”
The Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly declined interview requests made over the past 12 weeks.
Because of MCSO’s lack of response, TMJ4 sent a request for comment to Crowley and every county supervisor on Thursday. Crowley’s office and Wasserman were the first to respond.
TMJ4 spent months investigating the crash and how the office handled the case.
Through open record requests and from other sources, the news station obtained the sheriff’s office’s crash report, internal correspondence, witness recordings, dash camera video, misconduct files, and other documents.
The evidence exposes a botched investigation with missing evidence, incompetence, and misconduct.
It also reveals how officials violated the victim’s legal rights as a crime victim.
The victim in the case is Monica Nash, who’s spent four years fighting to get answers about what happened to her on Interstate 94.
In January 2020, Nash’s vehicle was hit from behind and slammed into a guardrail.
She had just crawled out of the back window of her crumpled and totaled car, holding her 3-day-old daughter, when a man ran from the vehicle that hit her and demanded her baby.
“He’s like really hyper,” Nash told TMJ4 in an interview. “And he runs up to me and says, ‘Give me the baby. Give me the baby.’"
That man fled in a waiting vehicle after witnesses stopped and before Milwaukee County Sheriff’s deputies arrived.
No one was ever arrested.
That’s despite the suspect’s totaled vehicle being left at the scene, a stack of traffic cameras overlooking the area, and multiple witnesses identifying the owner and seeing the man try to grab the baby.
“This guy is basically a ghost,” Monica told TMJ4. “He’s not charged. He’s not held accountable. He’s not held responsible at all.”
Witness confirms victim's account
After the investigation fell apart, Nash filed a series of complaints, prompting the sheriff’s office to conduct an internal investigation into how the case was handled.
As part of the internal probe, investigators re-interviewed a witness who was at the scene. TMJ4 is withholding that witness’s name because the station wasn’t able to reach him ahead of this report.
Below are excerpts from that witness’s interview. [Listen to the interview audio in the video story at the top of the page.]
INVESTIGATOR: You did not see the actual crash itself?
WITNESS: No. I was probably like literally 30 seconds from it happening.
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INVESTIGATOR: Did you ever hear him make any references to her saying 'Give me the baby' or anything? Did you think he was ever trying to take the baby?
WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Yes. 100 percent yes. I actually do remember that.
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WITNESS: He was like trying to look at her baby to see if her baby was OK and stuff. He literally said that at least like five times. “Can I see your baby? Can I see your baby?”… But it was odd like too, because he was literally trying to take her baby from her, you know what I mean. It wasn’t even like Give me your baby, he was literally like trying to grab her baby from her, and I was almost like, what are you doing dude.
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INVESTIGATOR: Did you get the impression that he was concerned for the baby’s well-being or that he was actually trying to take the baby, actually take the baby with him?
WITNESS: It was a little bit of both. It seemed like he was concerned, but it was so weird that it almost seemed like he was trying to take the baby. At the time, I thought he could have been in shock. But just the way he was interacting with her, it was very, very strange. Either it was more to it, that he knew and was trying to steal her baby or he had a head injury and could have been in shock. It’s hard to f***ing tell, you know what I mean?
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WITNESS: It was just odd too. Just like where it happened and how the incident happened. There’s a lot to it. Like, I would be digging into it being more than just a normal, uh, the way he was trying to grab her baby and stuff. We know about a lot of sketchy stuff with trafficking and lot of things. Don’t want to read into stuff, but you got to have all doors open and stuff to be looking into that. You know what I mean?
INVESTIGATOR: Yeah.
In his crash report, the main deputy, Shawn Bacich, did not document any information about the man trying to take the baby and never followed up on those allegations.
Even after suspending Bacich for mishandling the case, the Sheriff’s Office would not re-open the investigation.
Internal records show the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office was not aware of the allegations with the baby when they declined to move forward with prosecution.
[Editor’s note: Dave Biscobing is the Chief Investigative Reporter for KNXV-TV (TMJ4’s sister station) in Phoenix, AZ and serves as a corporate trainer for Scripps investigative news teams. For this story, he can be reached at David.Biscobing@TMJ4.com.]
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