Waukesha Christmas Parade Suspect Withdraws Insanity Plea: 'I Have My Own Reasons Why'
On Nov. 21, 2021, Darrell Brooks Jr. reportedly drove an SUV into a parade full of locals celebrating Christmas, killing six and injuring dozens of others.
Brooks now faces a bevy of charges, including six counts of homicide.
Initially, Brooks’s representation claimed he was not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect. According to CBS News, however, Brooks withdrew his insanity plea on Friday.
When the charges were withdrawn, Judge Jennifer Dorow asked the suspect why Brooks had made the decision to do so.
“I have my own reasons why,” Brooks said, according to CBS News.
Many have speculated Brooks’s attack on the parade may have been racially motivated.
A number of past social media posts written by Brooks in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd actively encouraged violence against white people.
Many of the posts were gathered and released by the U.K. Daily Mail in a Nov. 23, 2021, report. The Facebook account Brooks used to post many of these messages has since been deleted.
Perhaps the most egregious of the posts had Brooks calling for “old white” people to be assaulted.
“LEARNED ND TAUGHT BEHAVIOR!! so when we start bakk knokkin white people TF out ion wanna hear it…the old white ppl 2, KNOKK DEM TF OUT!! PERIOD..,” Brooks wrote in 2009, according to the Daily Mail.
Brooks followed up the post with a middle-finger emoji.
The suspected killer posted and shared a number of additional anti-white and anti-semitic posts, including one seemingly in support of Adolf Hitler, the Daily Mail reported.
According to CBS News, after Brooks withdrew his plea charge, Judge Dorow moved the next hearing in Brooks’s case back to Sept. 19.
Brooks’s defense attorney’s made a number of recent moves to try to get their client off.
Last month, the defense filed a motion to have the case dismissed over a search of Brooks’s cell in July. Dorow denied the motion, insisting that none of the materials in the cell were privileged information.
According to CBS News, Dorow rejected another motion to suppress statements made by Brooks.
The defense claimed Brooks had invoked his right to remain silent, but Dorow was yet again unconvinced.
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