Hausien Hakeem Rakeem Hennings was a 27-year-old Black/African-American man whose life ended in a fatal shooting in Milwaukee on December 30, 2016. Late that Friday night, at approximately 10:15 p.m., Milwaukee police were sent to the area of North 6th Street and West Chambers Street after receiving a report that someone had been shot. Officers arrived to find Hennings lying at the corner with a gunshot wound.
Police immediately began CPR and continued their efforts until personnel from the Milwaukee Fire Department arrived, but Hennings could not be saved and was pronounced dead at the scene. Later reporting indicated that the fatal wound was a single gunshot to the chest.
In the immediate aftermath, publicly available reporting provided little information about what led to the shooting. There was no announced motive and no arrest was reported in the initial coverage. Hennings's death was subsequently included among the homicides recorded in Milwaukee during 2016, and his killing has continued to appear in online cold-case listings associated with the Milwaukee Police Department.
The investigation took on additional significance more than a year later when Milwaukee police recovered a firearm from Robert L. Thomas. On March 14, 2018, officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert encountered Thomas and recovered a loaded. 40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun with its serial number filed off. Investigators test-fired the weapon and compared its ballistic markings with cartridge casings from several shootings that had occurred during the preceding two years. Authorities concluded that it was highly probable the handgun had been used in multiple Milwaukee shooting incidents.
News reports describing the subsequent criminal complaint said the same handgun had been used in the fatal shooting near 6th and Chambers in which the victim was struck once in the chest. Those details correspond to Hennings's December 2016 killing. The weapon was also tied to other violence, including the June 2016 shooting death of a dog and the March 2017 killing of Jordy Robinson near 37th Street and Locust Street. FOX6 later described Thomas as a man whose recovered handgun connected him to crime scenes involving two homicides and the killing of the dog.
Thomas was eventually prosecuted in several Milwaukee County criminal cases. The formal charges included first-degree reckless homicide for Robinson's March 2017 death, mistreatment of an animal with a dangerous weapon, firearm possession by a convicted felon, and first-degree recklessly endangering safety in another shooting. A jury convicted Thomas of seven offenses across three cases. He received sentences totaling 46 years of initial confinement and 29 years of extended supervision, and the Wisconsin Court of Appeals affirmed his convictions in November 2024.
Despite the ballistic connection between the handgun recovered from Thomas and the 6th-and-Chambers homicide, the court record detailing the cases brought against him does not show that he was charged with Hennings's murder. The homicide count for which Thomas was tried and convicted concerned the March 2017 killing of Jordy Robinson. Therefore, while Thomas became publicly connected to Hennings's case through the firearm investigators linked to the shooting, the available court record does not establish a prosecution or conviction of Thomas for Hennings's death. No other publicly documented arrest, charge, trial, or conviction specifically for the murder of Hausien Hennings was located, and current online cold-case records continue to list his death as a Milwaukee Police Department murder case.
