Richard D. Curtis, a 58-year-old Black man, was fatally shot on Thanksgiving morning, November 23, 2017, on Milwaukee’s north side. The shooting occurred at approximately 9:15 a.m. in the 2700 block of North 36th Street, near West Hadley Street. Milwaukee police said the violence erupted during an argument, although authorities did not publicly disclose what the disagreement was about or how the people involved knew one another.
Police and emergency personnel were called to the area shortly after 9:00 a.m. Curtis was found suffering from gunshot wounds and was transported to a local hospital. Despite efforts to save him, he died from his injuries. Neighbors told reporters that they believed Curtis had been shot at least four times. One resident who was preparing to barbecue that Thanksgiving morning recalled hearing the gunfire, while other people in the neighborhood watched as what had begun as a holiday morning became an active homicide investigation.
Investigators remained in the neighborhood for hours. Police taped off portions of the block, searched the area for evidence, and went door to door as they attempted to determine exactly what had led to the confrontation. The shooting was treated as a homicide, and Milwaukee police publicly identified Curtis several days later as the person who had died.
Authorities made significant progress almost immediately in identifying people believed to have been involved. Milwaukee police announced that two suspects, one 32 years old and the other 42 years old, had been taken into custody in connection with Curtis’s killing. The arrests indicated that investigators did not initially view the shooting as an attack by an unknown assailant who had simply disappeared from the area; instead, the circumstances were described as an argument involving people police were able to locate and detain soon afterward.
The available public reports, however, did not identify either detained suspect by name. They also did not specify which person was believed to have fired the fatal shots, whether both men were considered participants in the confrontation, or whether one of the men was detained primarily as a witness or possible accomplice. Initial news coverage consistently described both as suspects and stated that the investigation remained active while police worked to determine the circumstances surrounding the shooting.
No subsequent reliable online reporting located in connection with Curtis’s death provides a documented criminal complaint, homicide charge, trial, guilty plea, or conviction involving either of the two men who were taken into custody. Because the suspects were not publicly named in the contemporaneous reports, their later court histories cannot be reliably connected to this homicide without additional official records. The publicly available account therefore ends with two men in custody and Milwaukee police continuing their investigation, leaving the ultimate prosecutorial disposition of the case unclear.
