Four Men From Chicago Have Been Charged With Killing a Man at a Milwaukee Taco Bell After a Run of Thefts From Jeeps

Four men from Chicago could spend decades in jail because prosecutors say they shot and killed Stanley Smith Jr. in a Milwaukee Taco Bell parking lot while they were trying to steal cars during their latest theft attempt in a series aimed at Jeeps.

On Tuesday, Lamont D. Stanton, 19, was charged with first-degree reckless murder and being a party to a crime. He was also charged with felony weapon and carjacking. Along with illegal murder, three other men were charged with being a party to a crime and also with theft of a weapon and a car. The names of the people are Correnthis C. Neal (18), Tramaine T. Walton (17), and Jovani J. Velazquez (30).

On May 5, just after 6 p.m., someone was shot in the Taco Bell parking lot at 5630 W. North Ave. in the west side of Milwaukee. Scene 1 Restaurant & Lounge, which is close by at 5526 W. North Ave., is where the trouble started.

A criminal charge says that Smith was at the bar and had parked in the Taco Bell lot. The DJ said that some people were breaking into cars outside, which made people, including Smith, run out of the bar and toward their cars.

The lawsuit says that a witness said Smith was in a “tussle” with men in masks before gunshots were heard, which made him lay still in the parking lot.

Police said that CCTV footage showed what happened. On video, four men get out of a car and walk toward a white Jeep SUV that is parked next to Smith’s. It turned out that the Jeep owner said the wires under his dash were pulled out. Soon, more people from the bar came in, and the four men split up.

But a short time later, three of the men held their arms up as if they were pointing guns, and the fourth person, according to the complaint, started fighting with Smith.

Soon, shots were fired, and the men drove off in a gray Jeep Grand Cherokee. The lawsuit says that police found shell casings from several different guns at the scene.

On Highway 175, police said they used Flock cameras, which are high-tech cameras that can read license plates, to find the gray Jeep. The police said they knew what car it was because the back window on the driver’s side was covered with a cloth. Police also found the car on surveillance video from other places, like a gas station.

The gray Jeep was reported stolen on May 4 on Milwaukee’s east side. The crime was caught on security video, which shows three men getting out of a car, stealing the Jeep, and then driving off in the car they came in, according to the complaint.

Following the theft of his Jeep, the owner got a call soon after asking $6,000 to get his car back, according to police. The owner thought the thief got his number from the computer system in the car. In the end, the police would use the suspect’s caller ID to write a search request for the phone records.

Police asked for multiple search orders to find any shared cell phone numbers that were found at the scene of Smith’s murder and in different places where the Jeep was seen.

Addison, Illinois, police told Milwaukee police that one of the numbers was linked to a months-long investigation into stolen high-end SUVs in northern Illinois. They also told Milwaukee police that Neal and Walton were being watched and that they could see where their cellphones were at all times. Stanton was also arrested on April 30 for a different crime, and cops have been following his phone since he got out of jail.