Less than a day prior to a firefight that left an assailant dead and an officer wounded, 24-year-old Isaiah Stott demonstrated concerning behaviors outside a Milwaukee church and a clothing store. According to a WISN report, Stott unsettled local store employees and made claims about needing to protect a church from evil and being surveilled by the CIA. Isabella Gary, a store employee, recalled that Stott came into the store after asking a security guard if he wanted to die, prompting them to close the store.
In a sequence of events that seems to tragically to tie together, the Milwaukee Police Department faced a critical situation. On the following day, Stott was involved in a shootout with police officers responding to a call of shots being fired on the streets. Officer Daniel Gonzales was shot in the calf and the side of his chest, and emergency surgeries have been performed to address his wounds. As Spectrum News 1 reports, a fundraiser has since been set up to support Gonzales and his family during his recovery period.
In a sermon following the incident, Pastor Kenneth Lock of Evolve Church remarked on the harrowing experience with Stott. "This week, we had an incident where a man who was deeply troubled, who felt that a voice told him to go buy an AR-15 and come murder me," Lock said in a statement obtained by WISN. Following Stott's encounter with the church, the Milwaukee Police Department reportedly cleared him after considering him emotionally distressed.
However, the crisis would escalate as Stott, armed and perceived as a threat, confronted law enforcement officers. When asked to put down his weapon, Stott reportedly refused, subsequently engaging in gunfire that resulted in the shooting of Officer Gonzales. Stott eventually was fatally shot by a 37-year-old partner of Gonzales. The Milwaukee Police Association described Gonzales's road to recovery as a long one and has asked for community support, as detailed in a Spectrum News 1 article.
This incident threads together a narrative of mental distress, public threat, and a law enforcement engagement with lethal consequences. Records obtained from the Milwaukee Police Department by JSONLINE highlight the acute tension between distressed individuals and public safety, casting a sobering light on the challenges faced by communities and their first responders.
