A Milwaukee County jury took roughly two hours to convict Darius Boldery, a 19-year-old Cudahy man, on all 11 felony counts connected to a wrong-way police chase crash that killed two Milwaukee teenagers. Jurors found Boldery guilty of two counts of first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree recklessly endangering safety, and fleeing an officer resulting in death. The chase began after a caller reported that occupants of a silver hatchback were reaching out the windows and pulling on parked-vehicle door handles, and it ended when Boldery drove north into the southbound lanes of Green Bay Avenue, striking another car at nearly 93 mph.
Per Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, police were first dispatched to Newberry Boulevard and Hackett Avenue after that call, then located a matching vehicle heading north on Maryland Avenue near Linnwood Avenue on Milwaukee's east side. An officer tried to stop the car near Capitol Drive and Green Bay Avenue, but Boldery took off instead of pulling over.
Wrong-Way Sprint Ends in Near Head-On Crash
Boldery then led officers the wrong way up Green Bay Avenue, driving north in the southbound lanes before his silver hatchback collided nearly head-on with a southbound Ford Edge, the paper's account states. Three people inside that Ford Edge — two 25-year-olds and a 24-year-old — were hurt in the crash.
Boldery's two passengers, 18-year-old Xavier G. Valdovino-Torres and 17-year-old Keon Carter, both of Milwaukee, died from injuries suffered in the crash, according to the same reporting. Officers who searched Boldery's car afterward recovered an Anderson Manufacturing .223-caliber AR-15-style rifle and an American Tactical .22-caliber rifle.
Teen Passengers Coerced Him, Boldery Testified
Boldery took the witness stand on Tuesday and testified that Valdovino-Torres and Carter coerced him into fleeing, telling jurors the pair threatened to shoot him if he refused, the Journal Sentinel reported. Jurors were unconvinced, deliberating for only about two hours before returning guilty verdicts on all 11 counts.
Event data recorder records cited in the criminal complaint show Boldery's Subaru Impreza was traveling 89 mph with the accelerator pressed to the floor three seconds before impact, hitting roughly 93 mph at the moment of the crash, according to FOX6 News Milwaukee. Boldery was held on a $200,000 cash bond after his initial court appearance in May 2025 and remained jailed through this week's trial, the station reported.
October Sentencing Could Bring Decades in Prison
Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Michelle A. Havas is scheduled to sentence Boldery on October 22. Each first-degree reckless homicide count is a Class B felony that carries up to 60 years in prison under Wisconsin law, according to the Van Severen Law Office, typically structured as up to 40 years of initial confinement followed by 20 years of extended supervision. Boldery turns 20 next week.
Case Adds to Milwaukee's Deadly Pursuit Tally
The case lands amid heightened scrutiny of Milwaukee police pursuits. Officers engaged in 970 vehicle chases in 2025 that led to nine deaths, six of them bystanders, according to an annual Fire and Police Commission review cited by WUWM. Milwaukee County logged 74 traffic deaths in 2025 and 37 more through early August 2026, the Journal Sentinel reported.
Less than a year after Boldery's crash, the Milwaukee Police Department revised Standard Operating Procedure 660 on February 6, barring officers from starting pursuits for reckless driving based on speed alone unless they identify an additional hazard, per CBS 58. The department had imposed a strict violent-felony-only pursuit rule in 2010 after four pursuit deaths in four months, only for the Fire and Police Commission to relax it in 2017 amid rising car thefts — a change that preceded years of record chase totals.
City Council Still Weighing Tighter Pursuit Limits
A Fire and Police Commission audit released in November 2024 found that fewer than half of pursuits — 48% — ended in an arrest even though nearly 30% ended in a crash, according to the Wisconsin Justice Initiative. In July, the Milwaukee Common Council delayed a vote on additional Fire and Police Commission recommendations that would ban chases for reckless driving spotted only after an attempted traffic stop and require officers to break off pursuits once public danger becomes acute, WISN 12 reported. Police Chief Jeffrey Norman has previously opposed further limits on officers' discretion.
Boldery's case is not Milwaukee's only recent fatal pursuit. In September 2025, a fleeing driver in a stolen Jeep ran a red light and killed a mother and her two sons, a Thai refugee family whose deaths intensified community pressure for pursuit reform.
