Three people were charged in connection to the death of Milwaukee postal worker Aundre Cross on Dec. 9.
Kevin McCaa and Charles Duckworth Jr. are accused of murdering Cross, and another person was accused of providing false information to law enforcement officers. The criminal complaint was filed last week by the United States Postal Inspection Service.
However, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Milwaukee Branch 2 is pushing back against some of the details in those court documents.
The criminal complaint alleges that 13 suspected drug-laden packages have been sent to addresses associated with McCaa and Duckworth since July 2022.
One week before Cross was murdered, he allegedly scanned one of those packages as "Delivery Attempted — No Access to Delivery Location." The criminal complaint said that the scan was made more than a mile away from the address it was intended for.
But NLAC Milwaukee Branch 2 President Dave Skowronek said, "that would not be a scan that a letter carrier would normally use."
After Cross' murder, postal inspectors went looking for that package, but court documents show they didn't find it.
"As a letter carrier, it leaves me to believe that it was intercepted by our inspection service," Skowronek said of that missing package.
Court documents say that the "Delivery Attempted — No Access to Delivery Location" scan combined with the package "not returned to its original USPS delivery unit, could indicate that a USPS employee retained the parcel or provided it to someone else outside of normal operations."
Skowronek responded to that part of the criminal complaint.
"I don't believe that happened. That's very unusual wording by the legal profession," Skowronek said.
"There's no thought in your mind that Mr. Cross would have taken that package?" TMJ4's Sarah McGrew asked.
"I have not a thought that Mr. Cross or my other letter carriers would take a package," Skowronek responded.
He does believe that the suspects tracked the package and saw the "attempted delivery" scan and that may have led them to kill Cross.
"The postal scanning network, you can look that up on USPS.gov, the status of your parcel, it says what it says and it might lead you to believe something that isn't true," he said.
Skowronek continues to ask the community to look out for their postal workers and report any suspicious behaviors like someone following or hanging out around a mail truck.
