A6 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 23 , 2021
CITY OF WAUKESHA/FACEBOOK/REUTERSCHENEY ORR/REUTERSlice radio, I heard another police
officer scream, ‘Shots fired.’ The
officer said, ‘Everyone get in-
side!’ ”
Schneiderman frantically
urged more people inside his
store.
“I had people pushing their
children under my record racks,”
he said. He turned off the lights
and urged people to hide as far
under the racks as they could
squeeze.
For nearly an hour, he had
about 50 people inside the shop.
“We didn’t know if this guy was an
active shooter and they didn’t
have him at that point,” the shop-
keeper said.
Inside, everyone was silent,
waiting. “Every single one of them
had a look of fear on their face I’ll
never forget,” he said. “The most
scared I’ve ever seen of a human
being.”
Police screamed into the shop,
looking to help any injured peo-
ple or try to reunite families that
had gotten split up. All along the
street, people found refuge in
stores, a church, a library.
Next door to the record shop, at
the Guitar for Life Cafe, co-owner
Becky Faustmann, who is also a
trauma nurse, helped stabilize
children as her husband pulled
them off the street and into their
shop.
Parents screamed for children
they had gotten separated from.
Becky helped “little girls from the
dance squad,” taking one girl out
to a police vehicle as the girl’s
father agonized over whether to
go with his daughter or search for
the rest of his family.
Becky also stabilized a little boy
who suffered a serious leg injury.
“I said, ‘I’m a nurse,’ ” she said,
“and the little boy reached up and
held my hand.”
Back outside, as Main Street
emptied, Becky saw the things
they left behind. A reindeer ant-
lers headband that had been
knocked off a child’s head. Back-
packs, handbags and the trap-
pings of a parade — candies,
beads, hats, folding chairs.
And here and there along Main,
a stroller with no child in it.
Into the night, the numbers
came into focus: Four women and
one man were killed; they ranged
in age from 52 to 81. Eighteen
children, ages 3 to 16, arrived at
Children’s Wisconsin hospital.
There were three sets of siblings
among them. They had cuts on
their faces, bruises, broken bones
and in some cases, serious head
injuries.
Dozens more people, including
a priest and students at Waukesha
Catholic School, needed emer-
gency care at five other hospitals.
The sun rose Monday and the
governor ordered flags flown at
half-staff and the police chief pre-
pared to deliver more details and
clergy prepared an evening vigil.
And Becky and Dan Faustmann,
though they don’t usually open
their cafe on Mondays, unlocked
the doors, brewed an urn of coffee
and warmed up some chili for
anyone who might come by.
“I don’t know if I should be
open or if I should get out of here,”
Dan said. “I just feel lost.”
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]Bellware and Guarino reported from
Waukesha, Wis. Andrea Salcedo in
Washington contributed to this
report.Jodi Singsime and her family
pulled themselves away from the
curb, back toward the building
line.
On the street, Singsime could
think of only one thing: “Get my
family back,” she said.
Even as the Singsimes scurried
back from the street, Jodi saw the
Escape plowing into people. “It
was just kind of slow motion,” she
said.
The sound was what many
would remember most vividly.
Angelito Tenorio, a Democratic
candidate for state treasurer who
was at the parade with his family
and campaign manager, heard a
loud bang, then “deafening cries
and screams,” then “absolute cha-
os.”
At Vinyl Vault Records on Main
Street, Dan Schneiderman, the
owner, was standing at his shop
window with a co-worker and a
couple of friends when suddenly,
he said, “all the sound was literal-
ly sucked out of my ear and it went
in slow motion. I heard the thud-
thud-thud and the car screaming
past.”
The thuds were people, hit by
the Ford.
Schneiderman, 51, saw a pom
squad outside his shop, “five feet
from my front door. I watched
those poor kids get hit by the car.
It was [expletive] awful. You can
literally see them bouncing off a
car. It was a sound I cannot for-
get.”
After the impact, the SUV sped
up, “a lot,” Eckert said. “The driver
was hanging out of the car, the
windshield was so smashed up he
couldn’t see.” He seemed to be
trying to get away from police,
who were following him, she said.
Eckert yelled to her students:
“Get out of the road!”
Her dancers huddled a gainst a
building, the Waukesha tattoo
parlor, which was closed. They
ducked into an alcove alongside
the building, trying to block the
young students’ view of the car-
nage. They accounted for every-
one in their group, moved to the
public library, and called parents
to let them know all were safe.
“There were bodies all over the
street,” Eckert said. “There was
pandemonium. It was amazing,
though. People jumped in and
started to offer aid. It only takes a
couple of people to ruin some-
thing like this, but there were so
many good people there, too, to
pick up the pieces.”
The people who had been hit
had been marching with the
Grannies, the Xtreme Dance
Team and the Waukesha South
High School band, or had been
spectators lined along the side-
walk, Rodriguez said.
Montiho and his family had
stayed along Main Street after his
daughter’s performance, watch-
ing the other acts. A high school
band was passing by when they
saw the Escape speed by and plow
through the crowd, hitting sev-
eral of his daughter’s dance team-
mates.
His daughter and the rest of the
family were uninjured.
“Moms, dads, kids,” he said. “It
was horrible. They all tried the
best they could. I saw bodies and
kids and dads not breathing.”
Schneiderman grabbed every-
one he could and ushered them
into his store, “herding as much
people in as I could.”
He saw about 10 people on the
ground, “a little boy in front of my
store unconscious. Over the po-“It was just terror,” she said. “I
had a parent pull one student
directly out of the path.... I saw
everybody get hit.”
At Guitar for Life Cafe, the
Faustmanns saw the Escape whiz
by. Becky heard what sounded
like balloons popping, then
screams and noises she thought
didn’t sound real.
It was a vehicle crushing peo-
ple.
At that moment, Dan opened
his cafe’s door, saw a police officer
run by and heard what sounded
like gunfire. Many people said
they thought there was an active
shooter along the parade route,
according to state Rep. Sara Ro-
driguez, a Waukesha County resi-
dent who had just finished
marching with the county Demo-
crats.
But there was no shooter loose
on Main Street. City Police Chief
Dan Thompson said the gunfire
came from a police officer who
fired his service weapon at the
Escape, trying to stop it. Appar-
ently, no one was shot.
The Escape barreled on, the
driver honking his horn and slam-
ming more than 50 people to the
ground.
Positioned along the route,“laughing and having a ball,”
when suddenly, she said, some
strangers yanked Naylee and oth-
er children out of the street and
out of the way of a speeding red
SUV.
“Out of the corner of my eye,”
Morales said, she saw a police
officer abruptly turn anxious and
move toward the children, who
were swept up onto the sidewalk.
To Morales, it was just a blur of
red that zipped by. “Then I real-
ized my granddaughter was in
front of me... and I was pushed
back. It happened so quickly, it
was like a movie.”
A few blocks farther down, Eck-
ert’s dance troupe, just ahead of
the Milwaukee Dancing Gran-
nies, was prepping for its last
dance of the route. Eckert, walk-
ing backward at the head of her
group, taking pictures, had just
made sure that “Sleigh Ride” was
cued up for the dance. Her danc-
ers were about to turn the corner
to reach the final intersection.
It was 4:39 p.m.
Eckert turned to face her danc-
ers and “pretty much directly in
my line of sight... all of a sudden,
I see an SUV plowing through a
group of people, who did not get
up.”zipped past, its engine roaring.
For a few seconds, the parade
marched on, the roll of snare
drums, the chatter of children, the
footsteps of the band members
lingering in the air.
Then the oxygen seemed to
empty out of the parade route, as
if a plug had been pulled. Eyes
turned down the street, toward
one spot, at Main Street and Jas-
per Avenue, where the Escape had
turned into the crowd, into the
marchers, into the spectators,
3,500 pounds of steel and alumi-
num and more than 200 horse-
power plowing into people — doz-
ens of people.
Five people were killed. Forty-
eight were injured — old folks,
parents, children.
The driver, police said, was
Darrell E. Brooks Jr., 39, who
authorities said was fleeing from
a knife fight. He had been in court
this month, charged with battery,
domestic abuse and recklessly en-
dangering safety. He had pleaded
not guilty and a judge had let him
free on bail. Police said they will
recommend he be charged with
five counts of first-degree inten-
tional homicide.
By Monday, the people who
lead this small city 20 miles west
of Milwaukee had adopted the
pained, stilted language that has
become a ritual in too many
American places. Police and poli-
ticians stood before microphones
and used the phrases they had
heard only in training sessions
and on TV from faraway places:
“mass casualty protocol,” “addi-
tional counselors will be avail-
able,” “senseless tragedy.”
But late on an autumn Sunday
afternoon, with Thanksgiving
just four days away, a few thou-
sand people had united, their fac-
es unmasked, to celebrate each
other.
Lindsay Eckert grew up in
Waukesha, played in her high
school band, performed in count-
less parades. Now a dance in-
structor, she led a troupe of about
30 women and girls, ages 7 to 70,
everybody in Santa hats, march-
ing along Main Street, pausing
every block or so to wave their
pompoms and dance to “Sleigh
Ride,” the classic Leroy Anderson
holiday song.
Everybody had been so eager
for this parade, said Eckert, 35.
They’d waited at the head of the
route, practicing their routine,
breaking out in carols.
“It was super happy,” Eckert
said. “The energy was amazing.
It’s crazy how it all just changed in
an instant.”
Corey Montiho, who serves on
Waukesha’s school board, and his
wife and two daughters had taken
their places along the parade
route a bout 3:30 p.m. One of his
girls was performing with the
Waukesha Xtreme Dance Team.
“It was pumped,” said Montiho,
- “A mainstream American pa-
rade.”
Dan and Becky Faustmann,
who own the Guitar For Life Cafe
on Main Street downtown, were
grabbing coffees at their shop.
The parade was the perfect start
to the holiday season.
“We just got done with covid,
there’s no Packers game on, and
everyone is eager to get together,”
Dan said.
Lisa Morales, 69, was there
with her 3-year-old granddaugh-
ter, Naylee, and some neighbors,
PARADE FROM A
In a moment, SUV driver devastates c itywide celebration
ABOVE: A red SUV
speeds past spectators
moments before
plowing into a crowd at
a Christmas parade in
Waukesha, Wis. The
SUV mowed over a
series of white
sawhorses set up to
keep the street safe.BELOW: Becky and
Dan Faustmann,
owners of Guitar for
Life Cafe and Studio in
downtown Waukesha,
were inside their shop
when the SUV plowed
through the parade and
ran to help the injured.BOTTOM: Chairs are
left abandoned after the
SUV attack.SARA STATHAS FOR THE WASHINGTON POST