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.