A criminal complaint says detectives followed surveillance footage, a temporary license plate and witness accounts after the Aug. 28 shooting.

MILWAUKEE, Wis. — A tan Ford Focus circling a Milwaukee intersection became a central piece of an investigation that began with two men shot near a food truck and later led prosecutors to charge 34-year-old Lexus Ford with killing Michael T. Jackson and wounding Jackson’s friend.

The case against Ford, as described in a criminal complaint and local news reports, was built through several kinds of evidence gathered after the early-morning shooting on Aug. 28. Police examined video from the area, recovered 19 9 mm cartridge casings, used license-plate reader information to identify a car investigators believed was involved and interviewed people who described what Ford allegedly said afterward. Ford is charged with first-degree reckless homicide, first-degree reckless injury and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. The allegations have not been proven in court.

Milwaukee police were sent to the area of North 27th and West Walnut streets shortly before 4 a.m. after alerts indicating possible gunfire. Officers found Jackson, 39, with multiple gunshot wounds and another man who had been struck in his lower body. Jackson was pronounced dead at about 4:15 a.m., according to the complaint as summarized by local news organizations. The second man, identified in reports as a 33-year-old food-truck worker, was taken to a hospital with injuries that police described as non-life-threatening.

The surviving man gave investigators one of their first descriptions of what happened. He said he had been working at a food truck when Jackson arrived and the two spoke. As they later walked toward a vehicle, the man noticed what he believed was a gray sedan pull alongside them. He told investigators that a passenger-side window opened and he heard a series of gunshots before the vehicle drove away. The man then realized that he, too, had been wounded. His account placed the shooting vehicle close to the victims but did not by itself identify the person who fired.

Detectives then turned to cameras. According to the criminal complaint, surveillance footage showed a vehicle moving around the neighborhood before the gunfire. Investigators described it as a tan Ford Focus from roughly the 2005-to-2007 model years, with a distinctive black rear bumper. Video indicated that the car circled the area, stopped near where the shooting occurred and left soon afterward. The physical evidence at the scene also showed that far more shots may have been fired than the surviving victim initially recalled: investigators recovered 19 spent 9 mm casings.

A temporary license plate provided the next link. Investigators used plate-reader information and law-enforcement records to trace the Focus. The same vehicle had been stopped by police in July while Ford’s brother was driving it, according to the complaint. Ford’s brother was arrested during that earlier encounter and remained in custody when Jackson was killed, authorities said. The Focus was later released to Ford, who was identified as its owner. That history gave detectives a person to investigate while they continued examining events around the shooting.

Police also reviewed communications involving Ford’s brother. The complaint describes a Sept. 1 jail call between the brother and Ford’s former girlfriend in which the woman discussed an incident involving Ford’s Jeep. According to investigators, she said Ford had lost control of the vehicle after his keys went missing and that property inside the Jeep was taken. Her comments also suggested that Ford believed he needed to leave after something serious happened. Those statements did not establish what occurred at the shooting scene, but investigators later interviewed the woman directly.

The former girlfriend told detectives that Ford contacted her and appeared troubled, according to the complaint. Ford told her about recovering his Jeep and allegedly indicated that he had hurt someone and fired a gun. When she asked whether someone had been killed, the complaint says Ford responded affirmatively by nodding. She also told police he talked about going on the run. Prosecutors have presented those statements as part of the evidence tying Ford to the shooting, although the account comes through a witness and remains subject to testing in court.

When detectives interviewed Ford on Sept. 5, investigators said he supplied details about the events that preceded the killing. Ford said he had been selling liquor from his vehicle and had lost a key fob. He believed Jackson had taken it, according to the complaint. Ford later located his Jeep a few blocks away and said people were removing belongings from it. Other reporting on the complaint says Ford told detectives that a firearm was among property associated with the Jeep and that he identified Jackson as one of the people he believed had been taking items. Ford described himself as extremely angry about the situation.

That account is important because it provides prosecutors with a possible explanation for the confrontation, but it does not establish that Jackson stole Ford’s vehicle or property. The allegation that Jackson was involved came from Ford’s account to investigators. The publicly available reporting reviewed for this article does not describe an independent court finding that Jackson stole the Jeep, its key fob or anything inside it. Prosecutors instead accuse Ford of responding to what he believed had occurred by later firing at Jackson and the man accompanying him.

Jackson’s death transformed what initially appeared to police as a drive-by shooting with an unknown attacker into a homicide investigation centered on a dispute over the Jeep. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed Jackson’s identity after the shooting. Early reports from the scene said police had not yet determined a motive or made an arrest. Family members told CBS 58 that Jackson was killed on his son’s birthday and described him as a loving person and a good father. Those family accounts provided one of the few public descriptions of Jackson beyond the details contained in the criminal case.

The location also drew attention because the surviving victim said he had been working at a food truck in the early morning hours. WISN reported that the truck was operating near the shooting scene and noted that Milwaukee neighborhood regulations generally restrict food-truck operations between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. That regulatory issue, however, is separate from the homicide case. Nothing in the public charging information reviewed for this article indicates that the truck’s operating status caused the shooting or played a role in the charges filed against Ford.

Prosecutors filed the criminal case in September. At Ford’s initial appearance on Sept. 10, a Milwaukee County judge set his cash bond at $250,000, according to FOX6. A bail hearing and preliminary hearing were scheduled for the following week. Another report said Ford had already been free on bail in an unrelated Waukesha County drug case when the Aug. 28 shooting occurred. That separate case does not establish guilt in the Milwaukee homicide prosecution and is relevant only to Ford’s custody and court history.

The case remains defined by evidence that investigators say accumulated in stages: the surviving victim’s description of a car, video showing a Ford Focus in the area, plate data linking that vehicle to Ford, statements from people who spoke with him and Ford’s own account of the missing Jeep and property. Whether that evidence proves the three charges will be determined through the court process. No later disposition of the homicide case was located in the public reporting reviewed for this article, and Ford is presumed innocent unless proved guilty.

Author note: Last updated October 21, 2026.