Strangulations overwhelm Milwaukee domestic violence high risk team

Trial is looming for a Milwaukee man charged with stabbing his wife to death, then fleeing to Minnesota. And one of the nation's leading experts on family violence says it's a homicide that could have been prevented. Fox 6 investigator Brian Bolson is here in studio with his investigation. Hey, Ben and Kim, prosecutors say Gerard Stewart stabbed his wife 49 times and stuffed her body in the trunk of her own car. But a family violence expert is focused on what happened three months before her death. He calls it a warning shot that Stewart was more likely to escalate to lethal violence. He's been sending off so many red flags for so long, it's almost stunning. A jury will soon decide if 43-year-old Gerard Stewart is guilty of murdering his wife. But one thing is certain. Tameka Stewart is never coming home. She had the restraining order. He had the ankle monitor. Elizabeth Houston is now raising three of her big sister's ten children. She went to the police. And it just wasn't enough. When victims come forward for help, they should not die. And when victims come forward for help and they die, we have failed. Casey Gwynn is one of the nation's leading experts on family violence prevention. We are honored to have you here for day three. He travels the country training nurses, EMTs, police, and prosecutors. It looks like there's some potential blood. How to recognize the clues that an abuser is likely to become. A killer. The majority of all women murdered in America are killed with firearms. But it's not the guns he's focused on. It's something he says most abusers do to victims before the violence escalates. The victim is suffering brain damage by the second. They strangle them. Men who strangle women are the most dangerous men on planet Earth. Research published in 2008 shows men who strangle their partners are seven and a half times more likely to commit a future homicide than other abusers. Gerard Stewart's history of abusing women is long and well documented. He once shot a woman in the arm, punched another in the face, and was accused by a third of kicking in a door and making death threats. In 2018, he was convicted of pulling his wife's hair, stepping on her face, and threatening to kill her and everything she loves. He raised his hand a long time ago and said that he was more likely to kill. But Gwynn says the most troubling charge came in January 2024. He had made her get naked, you know, take off her clothes. Milwaukee police say Stewart was angry that Tamika was withholding sex. And according to court records, he barricaded her inside the bedroom of their 10th Street home and battered her while at least five of her children helplessly listened. He told... One of our other kiddos that they better not call the police. An 11-year-old called 911 anyway, and officers say they caught Gerard Stewart trying to jump from the bedroom window. In the midst of the ordeal, Tamika said her husband had taken one hand, wrapped it around her neck, and squeezed until she could not breathe. They're telling the victim, I can kill you. I am God, and I will decide if you live or die. Prosecutors charged Gerard Stewart with five crimes, including strangulation and suffocation. And based on published research, Gwynn believes that was Stewart's last warning shot. Men who strangle women are more likely to be the killers of women. A family court commissioner found a substantial risk Gerard may eventually kill Tamika and impose in strangulation cases. Those numbers are astronomical. They are. Michelle Coppins heads Milwaukee County's Domestic Violence High Risk Team, which meets twice a week to review the most dangerous cases and craft recommendations to protect victims. We are over capacity nearly every week. Last year alone, they took on more than 1,600 high-risk cases, and in 194 of them, strangulation was the primary risk factor. But Petrie says those are just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many strangulations. They can only review the cases where a person who's been strangled passed out or lost bodily function. It's a category they call strangulation to unconsciousness. Typically that indicates a higher level of force, a longer duration of time that someone is being strangled. Tamika told police her husband cut off her breathing for what felt like 30 seconds, but she never passed out, meaning her case was unlikely to be flagged high risk on that criteria alone. You can say there's way too many stranglers, we can't lock all the stranglers up. I say the stranglers are the ones that should be locked up. Gwynn says he's not casting blame on violence prevention workers in Milwaukee. After all, he helped Petrie to launch Sojourner 10 years ago. But when it comes to Gerard Stewart, he believes the writing was on the wall. He should have been in jail. Petrie says the only one to blame for Tamika's death is whoever killed her. But every death is cause for re-evaluation. Are we missing something? Does something need to change? Change is what Elizabeth Houston is after. I do hope at the end of this that they can come up with something better to protect the victims. That. There are 10 children waiting for justice. And a final resolution for the man accused of taking her sister's last breath. Gerard Stewart is finally set to go on trial for homicide in January, three years after his arrest for strangling his wife. Meanwhile, Milwaukee County's domestic violence high-risk team is facing a funding crisis. The team's work has been supported until now by COVID relief funds. The last couple of years, those grants expired at the end of last month. And Carmen Petrie says Sojourner and its partners are committed to continuing their twice-a-week meetings anyway while they try to determine. A sustainable funding source. And when would police respond to a domestic violence call? How do they determine if a case should be screened by the high-risk team? That's a good question. And there's something they've been doing here that others haven't. Every law enforcement agency in Milwaukee County uses something called the Lethality Assessment Program, or LAP survey, to assess domestic violence risk. But our investigation finds they're using an outdated version of that survey. And they're doing so on purpose. I'm going to be back tonight at 10 to explain why. Yeah, and you don't wonder what the circumstance of that case. What if just something happened when he drove by the case? If there was some sort of punishment, would this have stopped that? What we don't know is if it had been flagged by the high-risk team, maybe that GPS violation does more. We just don't know. But again, they say there's just such an overwhelming number of these cases, they have to focus on the most severe ones. But your story showing the link between strangulation and being high-risk, survivors or people who are in abuse situations, they themselves may not realize that they're high-risk. And that's why this is important, because it's educational. You should know if that happens in your situation or you know someone it has happened to. That is a signal. It's a predictor that there is a higher likelihood. It doesn't mean someone's going to become a killer, but a higher likelihood statistically that they will. All right. Brian Paulson, thank you. And if you need help, if you just want to talk to somebody, you don't have to leave now. You can just talk to someone. You can call Sojourner's 24-hour hotline at 414-933-2722. You can also send a text to 414-877-8100. All calls are confidential. You are anonymous.