$500 Bail for Man Accused of Pointing Gun at 4 Children, Wife

When police responded to a man with a gun call Sunday afternoon, they found four terrified children between the ages 2 and 9. The children told officers their father pointed a gun at them while in a fight with their mother, according to a criminal complaint.

The father, a 30-year-old Waukesha man, was charged Tuesday with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, disorderly conduct and four counts of pointing a firearm at a person. Waukesha Patch is not identifying the man to protect to identities of the children.

Bail was set Tuesday at $500. The man is now living in Milwaukee, according to online court records.

Officers were dispatched to the 2100 block of Kilps Drive on Sunday after the man’s father-in-law contacted police to report he was on the phone with the man’s wife, who told him the man was walking around the house with a gun. The man heard shouting in the background and then the phone went dead, according to the criminal complaint.

When police arrived on scene, a 7-year-old boy came to the door but then walked away. Police convinced the boy to let them into the home, where they found their mother on the phone, crying, and four children looking “very upset and terrified,” according to the complaint.

The woman told police her husband was "whipping” around a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun after they had been fighting the past few days over family issues, the complaint states.

“He pointed it at mommy,” one of the children told police, according to the complaint. All four children told officers he pointed the gun at them. Later, only two children said he pointed the gun at them. A 9-year-old child told the officer her father pointed a gun at all four children and she thought he was drunk because he was “acting silly.”

The woman was telling police how her husband spent Sunday morning yelling, swearing and threatening her. That’s when a child chimed in and told officers their father threatened to shoot a police officer, according to the complaint.

After a brief tactical situation, the man surrendered to police. He had a .01 percent blood alcohol concentration at the scene but a test later at the police station revealed he had no alcohol in his system.

The man told police he was walking around the house with the gun because he was afraid his wife would take it away from him. He originally denied pointing the gun at anyone, but later said he didn’t have a magazine in the gun at the time and that the loaded clip was in the closet. He added later that he hit the slide release while his children were behind him, saying in front of the kids “I can’t (expletive) take this anymore,” the complaint states.