Crisis team cleared troubled man hours before police shootout

By Nick Bohr

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    MILWAUKEE (WISN) — Less than 24 hours before a gun battle with Milwaukee police last Wednesday that left him dead and an officer wounded, Isaiah Stott, 24, was seen acting strangely for hours outside a Milwaukee church and a clothing store.

Surveillance video shows Stott coming inside the store at 76th Street and Mill Road after asking their security guard if he wanted to die. Store employee Isabella Gary said she and the other workers closed the store out of concern for themselves and their customers.

“He was pacing back and forth, he was sitting in his car, he took off his license plates. He actually came inside our store and asked could he hide out for a second,” Gary said.

Stott left when employees told him he couldn’t stay.

A Milwaukee police report indicates Stott was heard saying, “He needs to protect the church from whatever evil is coming and that the CIA has his phone tapped.”

A caller told police the man said, “He does have a firearm inside his car that he wants to bring inside to get rid of the evil.”

Evolve Church Pastor Kenneth Lock referenced the scare in Sunday’s sermon, saying he was at the church at the time but, by happenstance, entered through another door and didn’t encounter Stott.

“This week, we had an incident where a man who was deeply troubled, who felt that a voice told him to go buy an AR-15 and come murder me,” Lock said. “I really wish I could’ve got to him. We saw that he came and waited for hours. Unfortunately, within 24 hours, he was gunned down, and he wounded an officer, which we are praying for that officer.”

The Milwaukee Police Department confirmed a crisis team from their department spoke with Stott at the scene, but ultimately, he was allowed to leave without being detained for mental health reasons.

In a statement to WISN 12 News, MPD said, “Officers made contact and a crisis assessment was conducted, however, the individual did not meet the criteria for a Chapter 51,” which requires the “substantial probability of physical harm,” to themselves or others.

Gary says whatever the standard, it seemed to her that Stott posed a danger.

“I don’t know what criteria that you need if a man is standing outside a church looking for the pastor saying he’s going to, you know, kill him and looking back and forth waiting on people to come and threatening everyone,” Gary said. “I mean, I would’ve taken that seriously at that time.”

She said police spoke through Stott through a partially opened car window, and he never got out of the car.

Gary said Monday she’s troubled knowing an intervention the day before the shootout might have changed a lot of lives.

“Honestly, it was a horrible situation, I felt bad for that man and for the officer that got shot at the time, because I felt if he was taken the day before, because he was in our store here, and we did call the police, everything would’ve been prevented. Maybe he would’ve still been alive and the police officer wouldn’t have never got injured,” Gary said.

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