Sandra Nicole Lee, a 50-year-old White woman, was killed on the night of October 19, 2025, in a double homicide on Milwaukee’s north side. Lee and 64-year-old Marcus Smith were near North 27th Street and West Atkinson Avenue when gunfire erupted shortly after 9:20 p.m. Milwaukee police officers arrived at 4398 North 27th Street minutes later and found both victims critically wounded.
An officer began CPR on Lee, who was pulseless, not breathing and bleeding from her face, until Milwaukee Fire Department personnel took over. Despite the effort to save her, she was pronounced dead at approximately 9:45 p.m. An autopsy later determined that she died from multiple gunshot wounds to her back and scalp.
Investigators were able to reconstruct much of what happened through surveillance footage from the area. According to the criminal complaint, Lee and the man later accused of killing her had both been captured on cameras around a nearby business for several hours before the shooting. Smith also appeared on the footage later that evening. Shortly before the attack, Smith was seen on the sidewalk; moments later he fell to the ground. Lee then began running southbound. The surveillance footage showed the suspect chasing her while holding what appeared to be a firearm with his arm extended toward her. Investigators reported seeing multiple muzzle flashes as the weapon was pointed at Lee before she fell on the sidewalk. The suspect then approached her after she was down, and his shadow appeared to show him repeatedly striking her before he ran back toward Smith and ultimately fled west on Atkinson Avenue. Eight spent 9 mm cartridge casings were recovered from the scene.
Witness information quickly led police to Michael D. Williams, who was 26 at the time. One witness who knew the people who frequented the nearby businesses identified the man shown in a surveillance still as someone known as “Mike.” Another witness told investigators that the suspect had gone to an apartment building at 2901 West Atkinson Avenue after the shootings and identified him as Michael Williams. Officers went to that building and encountered Williams as he was leaving through a rear door near the alley. According to the complaint, officers noticed a strong odor of bleach on him as he was taken into custody. During the arrest, Williams allegedly made the statement that he had “did the city a favor.”
Police obtained a search warrant for an apartment in the building. Investigators reported finding an open container of bleach on a windowsill and a black T-shirt in a bathtub that appeared to be saturated with bleach. Two usable latent fingerprints were recovered from the bleach bottle, with one identified as Williams’ left ring finger. The next day, detectives searching the basement found a pair of multicolored Puma shoes in a storage locker. The shoes appeared to have blood on them and resembled the distinctive footwear investigators said the suspect had been wearing in surveillance footage. The resident associated with that storage locker told police the shoes did not belong to him.
The investigation soon expanded beyond the deaths of Lee and Smith. About an hour after they were killed, 44-year-old Lakendrick Roby was found shot inside a vehicle less than half a mile away on North 31st Street. Surveillance footage from that area showed a suspect dressed in clothing investigators considered consistent with the person recorded during the earlier killings. Police recovered five additional 9 mm cartridge casings from the Roby scene. A preliminary examination by a Milwaukee Police Department ballistics specialist concluded that the casings recovered from both homicide scenes were consistent with having been fired from the same firearm, further tying the two attacks together.
Prosecutors subsequently charged Michael D. Williams with three counts of first-degree intentional homicide, accusing him of killing Smith, Lee and Roby during the same night. Each count is a Class A felony under Wisconsin law and carries the possibility of life imprisonment upon conviction. Court proceedings continued into November 2025, when Williams pleaded not guilty to the charges and was bound over for trial. He remained jailed on a $1 million cash bond. Publicly reported court information at that stage did not establish a motive for Lee’s killing or indicate that Lee and Williams had been involved in a dispute immediately before the attack. Family members of the victims described the violence as senseless, while Lee’s niece, Deja Brown, urged people to remember Sandra for the person she had been rather than for the brutal circumstances of her final moments.
