A man has appeared in court charged with multiple homicides after a car plowed into a Christmas parade in the US – as a child became the sixth person to die after the incident.
Darrell Brooks, 39, cried and rocked back and forth with his face in his hands as charges were laid against him.
Image: Darrell Brooks had been released on bail at the start of November
Four women and one man also died when the SUV sped down the parade route in Waukesha, Wisconsin on Sunday.
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More than 60 people were also injured, including many children, and some are still in a critical condition.
Witnesses said Brooks appeared to be intentionally moving side to side to hit people with no attempt to slow down, according to the criminal complaint.
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A police officer shot at the car and hit it three times, the complaint added, while a detective also stepped in front and pounded on the bonnet – but Brooks drove past him.
The adults who died were Virginia Sorenson, 79, LeAnna Owen, 71, Tamara Durand, 52, Jane Kulich, 52, and Wilhelm Hospel, 81.
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0:25
Waukesha parade crash suspect appears in court
Brooks was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide at the court in Waukesha.
Prosecutors said more charges were pending after revealing that a child had become the sixth fatality.
Police Chief Dan Thompson said on Monday that Brooks had left the scene of a domestic dispute minutes before he drove into the parade.
Image: Darrell Brooks in court, partially obscured from the camera by his lawyer
Image: Darrell Brooks in court
He said the incident was not being treated as terrorism.
Brooks, from Milwaukee, has been freed on a $1,000 bail earlier in November in a case in which he’s accused of deliberately hitting a woman with a car.
Prosecutors are looking into the circumstances after calling the bail amount “inappropriately low”.
American Senator Ted Cruz has broken ranks with fellow US conservatives and
hit out at talk show host Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, saying it was “mafioso” behaviour.
Kimmel implied the suspect was a Maga Republican, despite the man’s mother telling police he had “started to lean more to the left”.
As a result, Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr threatened Disney and local broadcasters with investigations and regulatory action if they aired Kimmel’s show – which led to dozens of local TV stations affiliated with ABC pulling it.
US President Donald Trump, who appointed Carr, lauded the decision.
But Mr Cruz criticised the threats as “dangerous as hell”.
“I got to say that’s right out of ‘Goodfellas’,” he said, evoking the Martin Scorsese gangster movie. “That’s right out of a mafioso coming into a bar going, ‘Nice bar you have here.
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“It would be a shame if something happened to it’.”
The senator, a former constitutional lawyer, then adopted a broad mafioso accent to quote Mr Carr’s comments about broadcasters this week: “We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way.”
Mr Trump fired back, telling reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that he disagreed with Mr Cruz – one of the most powerful Republicans in Congress – and calling Mr Carr “an incredible American patriot with courage.”
Image: Demonstrations against his suspension have sprung up. Pic: AP
The Texas senator’s remarks are a rare example of a prominent member of the president’s own party publicly criticising the actions of the administration, highlighting deepening concerns over free-speech rights and Mr Trump’s threatened crackdowns.
Prominent Democrats and civil rights groups condemned the Trump administration’s pressure to punish Kimmel and others who speak negatively of the president.
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US talk show titans speak out
Kimmel’s fellow late-night hosts have rallied around him, as did former US president Barack Obama, who wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
Image: Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
Conservative activists had been angered by Kimmel’s comments on his show that they were using the assassination to score “political points”.
Right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead on 10 September as he took part in a public debate at a college campus in Utah .
Tyler Robinson, 22, was charged with aggravated murder, weapon, and obstruction of justice offences.
US talk show host Stephen Colbert has condemned the cancellation of fellow late-night star Jimmy Kimmel as a “blatant assault on freedom of speech”, as America’s top late night presenters came out fighting.
The move by Disney-owned ABC has been widely criticised, with the network accused of kowtowing to President Donald Trump, who celebrated the decision.
Also airing on Thursday night, Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central’s Daily Show, appeared in a garish gold set, in parody of Mr Trump’s redesign of the White House, to tell viewers the episode would be “another fun, hilarious, administration-compliant show”.
Stewart, playing the role of an over-the-top, politically obsequious TV host under authoritarian rule, lavished praise on the president and satirised his criticism of US cities and his deployment of the National Guard to fight crime.
“Coming to you tonight from the real […] crime-ridden cesspool that is New York City. It is a tremendous disaster like no-one’s ever seen before. Someone’s National Guard should invade this place, am I right?” he said.
He then introduced his guest – Maria Ressa, a journalist and author of the book How To Stand Up To A Dictator.
Image: Jon Stewart. Pic: Associated Press
Over at The Tonight Show, Jimmy Fallon told his audience he was “not sure what was going on” but that Kimmel is “a decent funny and loving guy and I hope he comes back”.
Fallon then promised viewers that in spite of people being “worried that we won’t keep saying what we want to say or that we will be censored”, he was going to cover the president’s recent trip to the UK “just like I normally would”.
He was then replaced by a voiceover describing Mr Trump as “incredibly handsome” and “making America great again”.
Image: Jimmy Fallon on Thursday’s Tonight Show. Pic: The Tonight Show X
Seth Meyers also joined the fray.
“Donald Trump is on his way back from a trip to the UK,” he said at the top of his show Late Night, “while back here at home, his administration is pursuing a crackdown on free speech… and completely unrelated, I just wanted to say that I have always admired and respected Mr Trump.
“I have always believed he was a visionary, an innovator, a great president, and an even better golfer.”
Kimmel’s removal from the show he has hosted for two decades led to criticism that free speech was under attack.
But speaking on his visit to Britain, Donald Trump claimed he was suspended “because he had bad ratings”.
It came after fellow late-night host Colbert saw his programme cancelled earlier this year, which fans claimed was also down to his criticism of Mr Trump, who has since railed against Kimmel, Meyers, and Fallon.
He has posted on Truth Social that they should all be cancelled.
Image: Jimmy Kimmel hosting last year’s Oscars. Pic: AP
Figures from both the worlds of entertainment and politics lined up to lament ABC’s removal of Kimmel.
Chat show doyenne David Letterman said people should not be fired just because they don’t “suck up” to what he called “an authoritarian” president.
During an appearance at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York on Thursday night, he added: “It’s no good. It’s silly. It’s ridiculous.
“I feel bad about this, because we all see where see this is going, correct? It’s managed media.”
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Image: Barack Obama on Jimmy Kimmel Live in 2016. Pic: Susan Walsh/AP
Former US president Barack Obama wrote on X: “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.
“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent, and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating it.”
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