A man is charged with murdering a man and a woman just four months after Milwaukee County Judge Milton Childs reduced his bail from $10,000 to $1,000 on charges stemming from a dangerous high-speed chase.
Allen Dale Grant, 61, was arrested in early March after leading police on a chase that reached upwards of 70 miles an hour in a 30 miles per hour zone and nearly hit several people. Officers found open intoxicants and a loaded gun in his car. Grant was charged March 4th with fleeing or eluding an officer and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
The following day, Milwaukee County Court Commissioner Katharine Kucharski set bail at $10,000 and Grant was unable to pay, so he remained in custody. Following a bond hearing on March 18th, however, Judge Childs amended Grant's bail to $1,000 on March 21st. Online court records indicate that on March 31st and April 1st, Grant committed pretrial violations, which Childs apparently ignored at a second bail hearing on April 4th. Grant posted his $1,000 bail three days later.
Early in the morning of July 9th, Grant was arrested in connection with the murder of a housemate and former housemate.
According to a criminal complaint, Milwaukee Police found one victim dead of multiple gunshot wounds in a duplex in the 6600 block of W. Carmen Ave. on the evening of Friday, July 8th. The victim's live-in girlfriend told police that she was awakened when her boyfriend was arguing with their upstairs neighbor, Grant, in a hallway of their home.
Grant, she said, pushed her boyfriend to the ground and then brandished a pistol while standing over him. As she closed the door, she heard 3-4 gunshots. She tried to confront Grant in his unit, but discovered that he had left the home.
A short time later, officers responded to a report of a second shooting in the 2400 block of N. 44th St. and found lying on a front porch a woman dead of a gunshot wound to the forehead. A witness identified Grant as the shooter and said Grant and the victim lived together until about a month earlier, when a fight between the two prompted Grant to move out and into the home on Carmen Ave.
Four hours later, at about 1:00 am, police responded to a report of a single-car crash in the 4600 block of N. 76th St. Grant, the driver, had crashed into a tree and flipped his car onto its roof. The Milwaukee Fire Department had to extricate him from the vehicle and he was arrested in connection with the two murders.
On Tuesday, July 12th, Grant was charged with two counts of first degree intentional homicide, two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm, and two counts of bail jumping.
Grant has a criminal record dating back to 1979, when he was 19 years old and convicted of burglary-related offenses. Six years later, he was convicted of robbery through the use of force. He was most recently convicted of second offense Operating While Intoxicated in 2019.
Court records in his March arrest do not indicate what, if any, justification Childs gave for reducing Grant's bail from $10,000 to $1,000 and then refusing to raise or revoke it even after two pretrial violations. Multiple calls placed to the number listed for him on the Milwaukee County Circuit Court website "could not be completed as dialed."
Childs was appointed to the bench by Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers in 2019 to succeed Joe Donald, who Evers appointed to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. Before that, Childs worked as a public defender. Within his first few months as a circuit court judge, Childs gave no jail time to a 27-year-old man charged with second degree recklessly endangering safety, fleeing and eluding police, being a felon in possession of a firearm, and being in possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.
Grant is being held on $150,000 cash bond. He will be back in court for a preliminary hearing Friday.