Pepe Sikisi-Belle Jr. and his cousin Gigi were known by friends and family to have a volatile relationship, sometimes marked by violence.
Relatives had expressed concerns about the 22-year-old Sikisi-Belle’s alcohol consumption, and they noted he once was witnessed trying to choke his cousin. She, at age 25, had a reputation of her own, including stories that she once had brandished a gun at a public gathering.
On May 30, their paths crossed again at a birthday party for Sikisi-Belle’s 4-year-old son that the boy's family had organized at Center Street Park. This time, the family gathering ended in tragedy, with Sikisi-Belle dead from two gunshot wounds and his cousin arrested on suspicion of first-degree reckless homicide.
Days later, however, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office announced that it would not file charges in the shooting, citing claims of self defense. The shooter was released from jail, and members of the public, including residents in Wauwatosa's Tosa East Towne neighborhood and Milwaukee's Enderis Park neighborhood that surround Center Street Park, were left wondering what really happened when gunfire disturbed an otherwise peaceful Saturday evening.
Now, more than three weeks after the shooting, a fuller story of the events of that day can finally be told, through a large file of investigative reports that were released June 23 to Tosa Forward News. The 108 pages of reports describe a family that appeared apprehensive about Sikisi-Belle’s willingness to escalate existing tensions. Those apprehensions proved justified when he locked his cousin in a chokehold.
She told police she fired twice at him, to free herself. He was pronounced dead by emergency authorities within 15 minutes of the first 911 call.
“I watched him die,” Sikisi-Belle’s mother, Marissa Bopilo Belle, told one of the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s deputies who investigating the killing.
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According to the investigative report, Bopilo Belle had advised her son not to attend the party in the first place, because of Sikisi-Belle's ongoing conflict with the mother of his son and her family and friends, especially her new boyfriend. Sikisi-Belle also appeared to have problems with alcohol and mental illness but wouldn’t seek help, his mother told police.
He could be “a demon when under alcohol,” his mother said, yet the last time they talked, he had been sober and was asking her for money to buy his son birthday gifts.
Tosa Forward News is referring to the shooter only by her nickname "Gigi" and withholding her full name because she was not charged with any crime. That decision by prosecutors has been criticized by Sikisi-Belle’s mother.
"They turn around and act like they're giving people justice, but they're actually making excuses for people to continue their crimes. I'm very angry because now a murderer is walking the streets,” she told the Journal Sentinel.
Tosa Forward News reviewed the full batch of investigative reports to piece together to following narrative of the party, the shooting and its aftermath. Witnesses interviewed by the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office gave varying details about what happened that day, though several described Sikisi-Belle in a state of agitation at the party. They also said his cousin had no patience for that behavior.
“If you put your hands on me again, I’m going to shoot you,” Gigi said at one point, according to the witnesses.
A short time later, the reports say, she made good on that threat.