Man gets 50 years jail term for murder

A man who shot a 53-year-old woman in the face
during a carjacking was sentenced to 50 years in
prison by a federal judge in Milwaukee on
Thursday. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa
exceeded both the defense's and prosecutor's
recommendations in handing down the five-
decade sentence to Grover Ferguson, 18. The
government asked for 20 years; Ferguson's
attorney suggested 15.
Ferguson, who was 17 at the time of the
shooting, was convicted of carjacking and of
firing a gun during a felony. The case had the
potential of life in prison.
Ferguson is among a small but growing number
of juvenile defendants charged in federal court to
address the surge in violent crime in Milwaukee.
His attorney, federal defender Daniel Stiller, said
he will appeal. Stiller said it was the longest
sentence he has had one of his clients receive in
20 years of defense work in federal court.
"While I respect Judge Randa's exercise of
discretion, I disagree with it and we'll ask
the court of appeals to review the process
by which he got to this sentence as well as
the substance of it," he said.
The shooting and carjacking occurred about 8:15
p.m. April 21. Milwaukee police had been called
to check on reports of a stolen Dodge Caravan.
While inside a parked squad car, officers heard
four to five gunshots and screaming. They found
the wounded woman bleeding from her face. She
was shot three times.
The woman told police she was getting in her
SUV when she saw a man, whom she identified
as Ferguson in a photo array, open her passenger
door and point a gun at her, according to the
complaint.
He demanded her keys. She paused, believing he
was joking. He demanded the keys again, and the
woman told police she feared for her life and put
the keys on the seat. That's when the man began
firing, she said.
The woman remembered stepping out of the
driver's door and falling to the ground before
crawling to the curb to avoid being run over by
her own car. Five hours after the carjacking,
officers found the stolen SUV parked in front of a
house in the 2300 block of N. 40th St.
Investigators kept up surveillance on the SUV
until 11 a.m. April 22, when they saw Ferguson
come out of the house and get in the vehicle.
Officers attempted a traffic stop, but Ferguson
fled, reaching speeds up to about 70 mph and
ignoring five stop signs and one red traffic light,
according to a state criminal complaint.
Ferguson lost control of the SUV and ended up in
the front yard of a house in the 3200 block of N.
39th St. He ran, but officers caught up with him
around the corner of the house and saw he had a
gun. Police ordered him to drop it. Ferguson was
arrested, and police recovered a loaded revolver
next to him.
Ferguson was found delinquent in juvenile court
of felony armed robbery in 2010.