Waukesha Christmas Parade Killer Sentenced To Life In Prison Without Parole

A judge sentenced the Waukesha Christmas killer to life in prison without parole Wednesday for killing six people and injuring dozens more after he drove his SUV into a crowd at the Waukesha Christmas parade in the Wisconsin suburb last year.

Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow sentenced the 40-year-old man, who will not be named per Daily Wire policy, on 76 charges, including six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and 61 counts of reckless endangerment, with each homicide count carrying a mandatory life sentence.

The six victims were identified as Jackson Sparks, 8; Tamara Durand, 52; Jane Kulich, 52; LeAnna Owen, 71; Virginia Sorenson, 79; and Wilhelm Hospel, 81.

“You have absolutely no remorse for anything that you do,” Dorrow said, according to The Associated Press. “You have no empathy for anyone … no one is safe from you.”

The defendant drove his red Ford Escape into the crowd gathered to watch Waukesha’s annual Christmas parade on November 21, 2021. According to the police, the alleged attacker used a “zigzagging motion” as he drove through the crowd, seemingly indicating an intentional targeting of people.

In a criminal complaint, CNN reports that an officer said the defendant looked “directly at him, and it appeared he had no emotion on his face” when he stepped in front of the vehicle, ordering him to stop.

The defendant apologized to the victims and the Waukesha community when he spoke for more than two hours in court.

“I want you to know that not only am I sorry for what happened — I’m sorry that you could not see what’s truly in my heart,” he said, according to The Associated Press. “That you cannot see the remorse that I have.”

The defendant told the judge he grew up poor, hungry, and without a father in rat and bug-infested apartment buildings while struggling with mental health issues since he was young, and experienced physical abuse. His mother and grandmother asked the judge to place him in a mental institution rather than prison, claiming he has been bipolar since he was 12 years old.

Dorrow cited passages and opinions from four mental health evaluations from the defendant’s doctors and concluded “that mental health issues did not cause him to do what he did” during the parade, “and frankly did not play a role.”

Waukesha County District Attorney Susan Opper told the judge that the defendant deserves the “absolute maximum sentence on all counts, consecutive.”

“You saw the videos,” Opper said, according to CNN. “This wasn’t him plowing into one large group of fifty people at one time and hitting them — it was linear. He hit one, kept going. Hit two, kept going. Hit three, kept going. All the way down the street. That’s consecutive sentences, your honor.”

Opper added the defendant’s actions were “intentional, willful, volitional conduct that warrants consecutive sentences stacked one on top of the other just as he stacked victims up as he drove down the road in complete disregard for any other person whatsoever.”

The Associated Press reports Chris Owen, whose mother was among those killed in the attack, told the defendant, “All I ask is you rot, and you rot slow.”

According to CNN, Alisha Kulich, the daughter of 52-year-old Jane Kulich, who was killed attending the parade, said her mother “won’t get to see me say my vows or get married to the love of my life.”

“And she won’t ever get to see my future kids, and they won’t know what it’s like to have a grandma who spoils them,” Kulich said.

Ashe Schow contributed to this report.

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San Francisco Launches Program To Pay Trans Residents $1,200 A Month For 18 Months

The city of San Francisco is offering a monthly stimulus program exclusively for transgender residents.

San Francisco Mayor London Breed announced that the city would begin accepting applications for the Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT) program Wednesday. The program is exclusive to transgender residents of the city, and led by The Transgender District, a neighborhood of the city for transgender people; it will give 55 transgender residents $1,200 a month for up to 18 months. The move is allegedly part of an effort to advance equity for transgender people.

“Guaranteed Income for Transgender People (G.I.F.T.) will provide economically marginalized transgender people with unrestricted, monthly guaranteed income as a way to combat poverty our most impacted community members face,” a website for the program reads. “The Transgender District and Lyon-Martin Community Health Services, in partnership with municipal city departments in the City and County of San Francisco, will provide 55 Transgender residents of San Francisco County with $1,200 a month in guaranteed income for a year and a half. The program will prioritize enrollment of Transgender, Non-Binary, Gender Non-Conforming, and Intersex (TGI) people who are also Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC), experiencing homelessness, living with disabilities and chronic illnesses, youth and elders, monolingual Spanish-speakers, and those who are legally vulnerable such as TGI people who are undocumented, engaging in survival sex trades, ​or are formerly incarcerated.”

The pilot program is the first of its kind, KRON 4 News reported. In addition to the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development, the Office of Transgender Initiatives, and the Treasurer & Tax Collector, the program is being led by Lyon-Martin Community Health Services and The Transgender District.

The payments will be regular and unconditional for qualified applicants to provide steady income for the recipients to spend as they see fit. The Mayor’s Office also said, via the outlet, that in addition to the temporary income, the program will also provide other resources such as so-called “gender affirming medical and mental health care,” as well as financial coaching.

On its website, the program announced it was accepting applications from November 15 to December 15.

“Our Guaranteed Income Programs allow us to help our residents when they need it most as part of our city’s economic recovery and our commitment to creating a more just city for all,” Breed told the outlet. “We know that our trans communities experience much higher rates of poverty and discrimination, so this program will target support to lift individuals in this community up.”

The city previously enacted a similar program to help starving artists affected by the COVID pandemic. According to a report from KQED, the “Guaranteed Income Pilot” program debuted on March 25, 2021. It gave 130 San Francisco-based artists $1,000 a month in income for six months, with no strings attached.

Earlier this year, the city of Chicago rolled out a similar guaranteed income program to promote “equitable recovery.” Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot, along with Department of Family and Support Services Commissioner Brandie Knazze, announced the $31.5 million pilot program, called the “Chicago Resilient Communities Pilot,” which would give $500 monthly payments to 5,000 Chicago families for one year “to provide additional economic stability.”

The program was one of a number of initiatives within the city of Chicago’s $1.2 billion “Chicago Recovery Plan,” which was created “to promote safe and thriving communities and an equitable economic recovery from COVID-19.”

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