Thomas E. Jones, a 38-year-old Black/African American man, was killed during an early-morning shooting on May 28, 2026, in Milwaukee. The violence unfolded at approximately 3:00 a.m. in the 4400 block of North 38th Street, near North 38th Street and West Congress Street in the city’s Old North Milwaukee neighborhood. Milwaukee police responding to the scene found Jones suffering from fatal gunshot wounds. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Two additional people were wounded in the same incident, including a 40-year-old who went to a hospital for treatment and another person who was reported as being 36. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office later publicly identified Jones as the person who had been killed.
In the immediate aftermath, investigators had little information available publicly about what had caused the shooting. Milwaukee police initially described the circumstances as under investigation and said they were searching for an unknown suspect or suspects. The case changed significantly within days, however, when investigators developed evidence that led prosecutors to file a criminal charge against Deangelo Dunbar, who was identified in court-related reporting as 36 years old.
According to the criminal complaint described by CBS 58, the confrontation began inside a residence. Dunbar allegedly entered the home and began bullying a woman who identified herself as Jones's sister. A physical confrontation followed, and multiple gunshots were fired inside the residence. Jones was fatally wounded during the encounter, while two other men at the location also suffered gunshot wounds. The complaint portrayed the shooting as a chaotic confrontation rather than a random attack on the street.
Dunbar was also wounded. According to the complaint, his girlfriend dropped him off at Children's Hospital, after which he was transferred to Froedtert Hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to his arm. Investigators interviewed the girlfriend multiple times. She reportedly told police that Dunbar did not explain what had happened and had only told her that he had been shot.
When police interviewed Dunbar, he offered an account in which he portrayed the fatal shooting as an act of self-defense. Dunbar claimed Jones had been intoxicated and had yelled for someone to get a gun during the confrontation. He alleged that Jones then attempted to pull the trigger, prompting Dunbar to take the firearm away from him. Dunbar admitted firing the weapon and shooting Jones, telling investigators that he believed the confrontation had reached a point where it was either himself or Jones who would be shot. This account represented Dunbar's version of events as described in the criminal complaint and was not a finding by a judge or jury.
By June 3, prosecutors had formally charged Dunbar with first-degree reckless injury while using a dangerous weapon. Public reporting described the charge as being filed in connection with the shooting that killed Jones and wounded the other people at the residence. Notably, the publicly reported charge was first-degree reckless injury rather than a homicide count. The available reporting reviewed for this synopsis does not establish that Dunbar had been charged with Jones's homicide itself, and no later conviction or trial outcome connected to Jones's death was located in the sources reviewed.
Jones's death therefore developed from what initially appeared to investigators as an unsolved triple shooting into a case in which authorities identified and charged a man who acknowledged firing the shot that struck Jones while claiming that he had acted to protect himself. The criminal complaint provided investigators' first detailed picture of the confrontation, but Dunbar's self-defense claim and the exact sequence by which the weapon changed hands left significant legal questions surrounding the shooting. As of the most recent publicly available reporting located, Dunbar had been charged in connection with the incident, but no completed trial, homicide conviction, or final judicial determination concerning responsibility for Jones's death was reported.
