Girl shot in gun game, police say
She was injured, then killed, buried in coverup, they say
By JAMES H. BURNETT III and AMY BOEREMA
of the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: July 31, 2001

A 15-year-old Milwaukee girl missing from her south side home since last July was wounded during a gun game with two neighbor boys, who then killed her to cover up the incident, police department sources said late Tuesday.

Angela Velzka-Lawrence


Photo/File
Angela, 15, who was missing from her south side home since last July was wounded during a gun game with two neighbor boys, who then killed her to cover up the incident, police department sources said late Tuesday.



The boys, 15-year-old twins; their 41-year-old mother; and an unidentified man who helped dispose of the body were in police custody Tuesday in connection with Angela Velzka-Lawrence's death, according to the sources and jail records.

The brothers lived down the street from the girl's home near S. 28th St. and W. Lincoln Ave. until they moved to Wauwatosa in April, neighbors said.

When Velzka-Lawrence first disappeared, the twins seemed as shocked as everyone else, said Melissa Brackman, 15, a friend of the girl.

Everyone speculated that Velzka-Lawrence had run away from home, something she had talked to friends about doing, Brackman said.

But later, said another friend, the twins admitted to her that they had been involved in her disappearance.

Sammie Brown, 17, said the boys told her that a friend of theirs had shot Velzka-Lawrence during a game of Russian roulette at the twins' house. Brown said she recalls hearing gunshots from that house that day.

Brown said the boys told her that the game shot hadn't killed the girl, and that the boys' friend reloaded the gun and shot her again to "put her out of her misery."

The boys also told her that their mother helped hide Velzka-Lawrence's body in a lake, Brown said.

Brown said she told the victim's stepfather what the brothers had told her, but said he didn't seem to take the story seriously. Brown did not tell police.

A police source familiar with the investigation confirmed much of the story that Brown said the twins told her. On July 13, 2000, the source said, the boys were playing a "gun game" with Velzka-Lawrence when one of them accidentally shot and wounded her. They panicked and "finished her off" with more shots, the source said.

Then the boys' mother, the unidentified man and the boys took Velzka-Lawrence's body to Marinette County, and the adults helped the boys bury it in a wooded area, the source said.

Then, last week, someone confessed to Milwaukee police that he had helped bury a girl's body in Marinette County, near the Town of Wausaukee. Using a cadaver-sniffing dog, officials there located a body in a shallow grave on Sunday.

On Monday, authorities recovered the body, wrapped in plastic. They estimated it had been in the grave about a year, and said positive identification could take up to a week, as investigators checked dental records and the body's DNA.

Velzka-Lawrence's relatives said early Tuesday that they had not been contacted by authorities with a positive identification of the body. Later Tuesday, the relatives declined to comment further.
Appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Aug. 1, 2001.

Ban girl gun games!

Russian Roulette=Gun game. Not to me. The depths of some peoples stupidity.[xx(]

"Brown said the boys told her that the game shot hadn't killed the girl, and that the boys' friend reloaded the gun and shot her again to "put her out of her misery."

They panicked and "finished her off" with more shots, the source said.

Brought to you live and direct by a values free public education system, and a lack of a father in most American households.

Don't want more gun control laws?  Sorry, it's coming, ready or not.

That right there is the single biggest problem we face in America today!!  Women raising the children without a man around to enforce the discipline.  SAD  SAD  SAD  SAD

sgtar15

Had she known the proper way to handle a firearm, this "game" would have resulted in a suicide, NOT a murder! [rolleyes]

Can't we just ban stupid people?

is this reasonable?  is this intelligent?

No, this was stupid.

Russian Roulette?

I have put a gun to my head (triple cheched as unloaded and safe).  It is not a good feeling.  I still couldn't pull the trigger.  I guess THAT is firearm safety.

What these kids did.... forgive me, but it was only a matter of time before she got killed.  One way are another.

Reagrds to her family,

Zaz

Then the mom gets involved disposing of the body.  I don't think a fatherly figure would have helped much in this case.

I have never put a gun to my head, ever.  Remember, a weapon is never to be considered unloaded.   That to me is firearm safety.

Not meaning to flame you, but hearing about actions such as this just causes me to shudder.

Touche'

I was humbled by the feel.  i won't say i recomend it, but it gives you a heightened awareness of what you are holding.  Anyhow, let it be known I DON"T recomend this, it is just one of my experiences.

Zaz

I just got a handgun, and after double-checking for unloaded (I don't own any 9mm ammo anyway, but you can [b]NEVER[/b] assume) I pressed the barrel to my head "just to feel" what it is like to be in a lethal situation with an attacker.  Buddy, I don't know what it is, but with your own arm pressing that unloaded piece of steel to your cranium, something just feels terribly wrong.  While mine was a simple 'learning experience', I suggest anyone who might question the lethality of firearms or think they're above death by innatural means to try this out.  If something doesn't click inside your head that "this feels wrong", then you should pray hard that you do not get into an armed attacker situation, because you will find out, possibly the hard way, that guns aren't something to be f'ked with.

[brown]Evil Jewbroni~
3 posts left[/brown]

Some of this post I totally agree with. But some has me worried. How is it that some men have the attitude that only they can discipline???
I realize there is a problem with having broken homes, and could very well be the cause of some of this. But not having a man around the house is merely giving these people excuses for their wayward actions!
I have seen women and men raised in single parent house-holds that grew to be wonderful people. Responsible and gun owners. To generalize the statement that men are soley responsible for enforcing the discipline is wrong.
Has anyone been to public schools lately??? An awful lot of two-parent families have problem children. They don't give a damn any more. If they teach their children, single parent or not, morals and the value of human life, this won't happen. Unfortunatley, if they did that, then they would have to responsible as well. They don't want to be!
THese parents would rather have a hand-out from the government and illegal drugs. I worked in the school for all of 6 months...then I got out. No one can do anything with these parents or their kids.
Many of the students that did their best were ones from single parent homes.Please try not to make general statements like that without considering impact.
If this country truley honored anything, including the Bill of Rights, we wouldn't be in this position today. Honor your children, your spouses, and your country; and dignity, values and morals will follow easily. Sorry-I will get off my pulpit now!:)
Joyce

Agreed.  The desire to know what it feels like sounds like a red flag in and of itself.

It's amazing how this stupid stuff always happens to these stupid people doing stupid things.

well look on the bright side one less MORON in the gene pool

I don't think the problem is single parent(male or female)families so much as parents, single or otherwise, who are willing to help hide the body. I think I can figure out where the kids get it. Remember stupid kids become stupid parents and usually have lots of kids.

Beggin' yer pardon, measters -- this is only addressed to a few of you:  [b]are you rockheads reading the article or not?!?!?!?[/b]

In other words, the GIRL wasn't the one who put a gun against her own head and pulled the trigger.  It was ONE OF THE MORONS THERE who MISSED when he was supposed to be shooting himself who first shot her.

It's true that she shouldn't have been there.  But there's no way to tell from the story whether she was participating, about to run like hell, or what.

There was a case in Redmond or Woodinville, Washington in 1997, right in the middle of the I-676 insanity, in which a teenager was shot and killed when some friends of his were screwing around with a gun.  His father saved the asses of gun owners in this state by making it quite clear that HIS child had been trained in how to handle guns, and wouldn't have done that -- it was the shitheads whom he was with who were screwing around, pointed a loaded gun at him, and pulled the trigger as a joke.