Carl Thurmond, a 64-year-old Black/African American man, was shot and killed on February 14, 2025, near North Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and West Concordia Avenue in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The shooting unfolded in broad daylight near a neighborhood liquor store, only a short distance from where Thurmond's family said he lived. What began as an apparent confrontation outside the business quickly turned deadly, leaving Thurmond on the sidewalk as the gunman walked away.
Surveillance
footage from the area captured events leading directly to the killing. Thurmond was recorded walking past the liquor store, and less than a minute later another man could be seen following him while carrying a handgun. According to the criminal complaint, the gunman approached Thurmond from his left side, raised a black handgun toward him and fired. Thurmond collapsed to the pavement. As the shooter attempted to leave, he fell to the ground. After getting back up, he fired another shot at Thurmond, put the firearm into his coat pocket and continued away from the scene.
Milwaukee police officers responding to reports of the shooting found Thurmond lying on the sidewalk just south of the liquor store. Officers and other emergency personnel attempted life-saving measures, but Thurmond could not be saved and was pronounced dead. Investigators recovered two fired. 40-caliber GFL cartridge casings near his body, giving detectives physical evidence that would later become important in the investigation.
Witnesses helped investigators reconstruct what happened before and after the gunfire. One person who had been inside the liquor store told investigators that Thurmond had attempted to enter the business but that James Mann Jr. prevented him from coming inside and pushed him away. The witness became concerned that violence might follow and moved toward the back of the store before hearing the gunshots. Another witness reported seeing the shooting from a vehicle outside. Investigators also reviewed surveillance recordings that corroborated the accounts and showed the gunman wearing a long dark winter coat with fur around the hood.
Additional surveillance footage followed the suspected shooter as he moved through the neighborhood. At another residence along the route, video showed a man appearing to fall backward onto a porch. The residents later discovered a black cellphone on the porch that did not belong to anyone living there. Police seized the phone, believing it had been dropped by the fleeing gunman.
Although investigators were initially unable to unlock the cellphone because it was protected by a passcode, notifications visible on the lock screen provided important clues. One Facebook notification referred to a user as "BOO MAC," while a notification from the Chime financial application addressed the phone's user as "James." Detectives searched Facebook and located a profile associated with the name James Mann and the BOO MAC nickname. Photographs on the profile were compared with surveillance images of the shooter, and investigators concluded that the person shown on the account appeared to be the same individual captured on video during the homicide.
Police identified James Mann Jr., then 38, as their suspect. On February 16, 2025, officers went to an address on North 22nd Street and took Mann into custody. During the booking process, when an officer asked Mann for his telephone number, Mann reportedly responded that he had lost his phone. Investigators believed the cellphone recovered from the porch after the shooting belonged to him.
Detectives subsequently obtained a warrant to search Mann's residence. Inside, authorities found. 40-caliber GFL ammunition matching the caliber and manufacturer of the spent cartridge casings recovered beside Thurmond. Police also recovered a winter coat with fur around the hood that investigators believed was consistent with the coat worn by the shooter in surveillance footage. Together with the video recordings, witness identifications and cellphone evidence, those discoveries formed the core of the prosecution's case.
Mann was formally charged with first-degree intentional homicide and possession of a firearm by a felon. He made an initial appearance in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on February 21, 2025, and a judge set his cash bond at $350,000. Thurmond's relatives expressed relief that an arrest had been made but continued to struggle with why he had been killed. One family member initially believed the confrontation might have involved an attempted robbery, while reports from the investigation described a dispute involving Thurmond's attempt to enter the liquor store. Authorities did not publicly establish a clear motive for why the confrontation escalated into the fatal shooting.
Thurmond's family remembered him as a beloved grandfather, brother and neighborhood handyman who enjoyed making people laugh and was known for being able to repair almost anything around a home. Relatives said he regularly left voicemails when family members did not answer their phones, recordings that took on new significance after his death. Family and friends later gathered near the location where he was killed to release balloons and remember his life.
The prosecution eventually ended without a trial. On February 2, 2026, Mann entered a no-contest plea to first-degree reckless homicide as part of a plea agreement. The original intentional-homicide allegation was resolved through that plea, while the separate felon-in-possession firearm charge was dismissed but read into the record, meaning the judge was permitted to consider the conduct associated with that charge when imposing sentence.
On March 13, 2026, a Milwaukee County judge sentenced James Mann Jr. to 30 years in prison for Thurmond's killing, followed by an additional 15 years of extended supervision. The sentence brought the criminal prosecution to a conclusion more than a year after the Valentine’s Day shooting that left Thurmond dead on a Milwaukee sidewalk.
