911 calls released in Milwaukee mayor attack

MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett’s niece told a 911 operator after seeing a man beat him up while he was answering a grandmother’s cries for help that her uncle was “bleeding all over the place.”

The 55-year-old mayor was attacked by a man as he tried to help the woman and her 1-year-old granddaughter near the Wisconsin State Fair on Saturday.

“My uncle just tried to step in and the guy took a stick to him and hit him over the head and he’s bleeding all over the place,” Barrett’s niece told a dispatcher. The emergency calls were released on Tuesday.

The mayor was released on Monday from the hospital where he received treatment for a shattered hand, missing teeth and gashes on his face and head. He is expected to give a public statement from his home on Wednesday.

After leaving the fair on Saturday night, Barrett was walking back to his sister’s car with her, his two daughters and his niece when they heard a grandmother call for help. When Barrett tried to call 911, the 20-year-old man allegedly attacked him, police have said.

“My granddaughter’s birth father just tried to pull her out of the car, broke my cell phone, threatened to shoot us and to shoot himself,” the grandmother told a dispatcher in a separate 911 call released Tuesday.

The woman also told the dispatcher that when she saw passers-by, she jumped out of the car and shouted to call 911.

The niece doesn’t give her name in the version of the call released to the Associated Press on Tuesday. Barrett’s brother, John Barrett, said Tuesday his niece does not want to be publicly identified at this time.

The man has been arrested. Kent Lovern, the chief deputy district attorney in Milwaukee County, said in an e-mail that he did not anticipate that there would be any charges in the case before Wednesday afternoon.

Barrett’s family, friends and even President Barack Obama have lauded him for trying to help the woman and her granddaughter, and he has become a local hero to many in Milwaukee.

On Tuesday, Brew City Brand Apparel started selling black and yellow T-shirts in honor of Barrett reading “Our Mayor Ain’t No Cream Puff.” Cream puffs are enormously popular at the state fair, which ended Sunday.

One of the owners and a neighbor of the mayor, Frank Keppler, said he’s donating the profits to the Milwaukee Commission on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault.

“I just thought it was something everyone could agree on and maybe cheer everybody up for a minute,” he said. He said he already dropped off some at the mayor’s house and sold most of rest. He plans to print 400 more immediately after getting an order for 200 from the city.