Dantae Hargraves, a 44-year-old Black/African American man, was fatally shot on the night of December 30, 2024, near North 27th Street and West Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At about 9 p.m., Milwaukee police received a 911 call from someone who knew Hargraves and reported that he had been shot. Police and emergency medical personnel responded and attempted life-saving measures, but Hargraves died from his injuries.
Investigators found evidence indicating that the shooting
occurred near the entrance of a residence in the area. A detective recovered a fired 9mm cartridge casing outside the building and a bullet fragment on the ground near a balcony fence and concrete ledge. As detectives began reconstructing Hargraves' movements that evening, they learned from someone familiar with him that he often traveled by bus, walked, or received rides from other people. That information led police to examine surveillance recordings from Milwaukee County Transit System buses operating around the time of the killing.
The bus footage became a central part of the investigation. According to the criminal complaint, video showed Hargraves traveling on a northbound bus with another individual. Shortly after 9 p.m., both exited near 27th and Capitol. Hargraves began walking away, apparently unaware that the other person was following him. Recordings from multiple buses showed a masked individual wearing lighter-colored clothing on his upper body and darker clothing below walking behind Hargraves toward the location where the shooting occurred. Another recording showed the second person traveling along essentially the same path approximately seven seconds behind Hargraves.
Investigators alleged that the footage captured additional actions shortly before the shooting that strengthened their suspicion that Hargraves was deliberately being followed. After leaving the bus, the person behind Hargraves appeared to put a glove on his right hand. The individual then moved his vest away from the right side of his waist in a motion investigators believed was consistent with preparing to retrieve something from a pocket or waistband. Detectives compared those recordings with other surveillance footage, including video from a Walmart visited earlier that evening.
The investigation eventually focused on Eddie Ivy of Milwaukee. Detectives discovered that Ivy had been wounded in a separate shooting near 24th Street and Becher Street in March 2023. During the investigation of that earlier shooting, Ivy reportedly told police that the person responsible was someone he knew as "D." He later gave detectives the first name Dantae and ultimately identified Dantae Hargraves as the person he believed had shot him. Prosecutors later argued that the earlier incident provided Ivy with a motive to seek out and kill Hargraves. The allegation that Hargraves had shot Ivy was part of the prosecution's account of the case and was not itself established through the later homicide conviction.
Police arrested Ivy on January 2, 2025, at the Milwaukee Public Library near 8th Street and Wisconsin Avenue. During his arrest, investigators recovered an EBT card belonging to Ivy that authorities said had been used for purchases at Walmart. They also recovered an MCTS fare card that prosecutors said was the same card used by the suspect while riding the buses captured on surveillance footage. Those items, combined with the Walmart recordings, transit footage, the movements of the suspect before the shooting, and the alleged history between Ivy and Hargraves, became important components of the case against him.
Prosecutors charged Ivy with first-degree intentional homicide, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and felony bail jumping. He made his initial appearance in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on January 8, 2025, and bond was set at $350,000. The prosecution maintained that Ivy encountered Hargraves while using public transportation, followed him after they got off the bus near 27th and Capitol, and killed him in retaliation for the earlier shooting.
The case eventually proceeded to trial. On May 7, 2026, a Milwaukee County jury found Ivy guilty of first-degree intentional homicide in Hargraves' death, as well as possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and bail jumping. The verdict ended the question of criminal responsibility that had begun with the surveillance investigation following the December 2024 shooting.
On July 24, 2026, a Milwaukee County judge sentenced Eddie Ivy to life in prison for the killing. The conviction and life sentence brought the prosecution of Hargraves' death to a close more than a year and a half after the shooting, with the transit-system recordings, evidence recovered following Ivy's arrest, and the documented history between the two men forming major parts of the case presented against him.
