Jessalyn Torres: Waukesha victim's uncle says Darrell Brooks makes him 'sick to his stomach'
The heartbroken uncle of an 11-year-old girl plowed down by an SUV at the Waukesha Christmas parade massacre has revealed shocking details of the aftermath and said he hopes the suspect charged in the ambush is imprisoned for life.
Ryan Kohnke, an Army vet whose niece Jessalyn Torres is fighting for her life on a ventilator a week after the attack, said he wants Darrell Brooks Jr to be punished to the full extent of the law for allegedly killing six people and wounding more than 60 on November 21. MEAWW previously reported how Jessalyn told doctors to "glue her back together" after being hospitalized. She is among four children who remain in critical condition after the massacre, with three others in fair condition.
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"I hope he spends the rest of his jail in isolation," Kohnke said during an appearance on Fox News’ Justice with Judge Jeanine. "I don’t think he’ll ever see the general population because they’re afraid of what might happen to him." Kohnke recalled that he was standing at the sidelines of the parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and couldn't do anything as a red SUV broke through a safety barricade and plowed into revelers. Jessalyn was participating in the parade with the Waukesha Xtreme Dance group and had just passed through, prompting Kohnke to worry about her safety as Brooks barreled into the crowd. "After I [saw] that he continued down the parade route, I became very afraid for their lives," Kohnke said.
He recounted how he and his daughters rushed to Jessalyn's aid as she was accompanied by her sisters and mother. "My daughters, what they have seen was indescribable," Kohnke recalled. "It was what you hear from veterans. There were bodies everywhere, there were clothes everywhere, everybody was screaming ‘oh my God,’ yelling for their children, yelling for their loved ones."
Thirty nine-year-old Brooks was released from custody on a $1,000 bail after he initially mowed down a woman with his SUV. Following the parade massacre, he was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide, a charge that carries a mandatory life sentence if convicted. That said, he's expected to face more charges after eight-year-old victim Jackson Sparks succumbed to his injuries last week.
Kohnke said he was there at Brooks’ bail hearing last Tuesday when the judge set the bail amount at $5 million despite him already having been free on bail from a previous crime. Jessalyn's uncle said he felt ill while witnessing Brooks' reaction to the said charges. "It made me sick to my stomach," he told Judge Jeanine Pirro. "To hear him start crying when the judge mentioned these [charges] carried a life sentence. To me, it was selfish, that he was worried about himself."
Jessalyn suffered a broken pelvis and femur, a fractured skull, lacerations to her lungs, and lost a kidney after being run over by the SUV. Her mother Amber Kohnke told the new York Post that her daughter was still at the Children's Wisconsin Hospital, where the family spent the Thanksgiving holiday by her bedside.
"No mother should ever go through this. This is a very traumatic ordeal," Kohnke, a mother of four, told the newspaper. "The hardest part was not being with everyone and Jessalyn, in the condition she is, was not able to be with her family either," she said.
Taking to Facebook on Saturday, the embattled parent lamented, "My poor child was literally hit by a truck dead on (she has the marks from the vehicle's grill across her chest) and was thrown around 20-30 feet or so." Kohnke added, "My baby may be strong but there are times in our lives when we need to just sit back and heal. This is that time for her. Although she is back to being a sleeping body filled with tubes and a machine that is breathing for her, she is comfortable."