Family, friends say Samuel Sharpe Jr. found purpose among Milwaukee's unsheltered
It had been 10 months since Samuel Sharpe Jr. spent every night in a warm bed with a roof over his head.
The choice was deliberate. Sharpe, 43, wanted to live among Milwaukee's unhoused population and bring to them what he felt his newfound belief in God and the Bible had brought to him. He wanted to give them hope.
"He had stated to me that he wanted to live among them to let them know there was a light at the end of the tunnel," Robert Camacho told the Journal Sentinel. "They didn’t have to be hopeless."
Camacho, a street pastor who ministers to roughly 4,500 of the city's men and women who call the streets home, was by Sharpe's side during his transformation. Over a two-year period, they read and studied the Bible together. The higher power in the Bible goes by many names — God, Jesus Christ, Jehovah, Yahweh, the Messiah.
Jehovah was the name he identified with most. He wore a hat with the name Jehovah on it. He had it tattooed on his chest. Soon, "everyone was calling him that," Camacho said.
On Tuesday, Camacho went to the tent encampment near North 14th and West Vliet streets. The area is home to roughly 70 unhoused people.
As he'd done dozens of times before, Camacho was looking for Sharpe to read the Bible. Instead, he found him with with a knife in each hand, pointing them toward another man who lived in the encampment.
Camacho then watched as five out-of-state officers from Columbus, Ohio, shot Sharpe, who died at the scene.
"He was pretty even-tempered," Camacho said. "But he had a lapse in judgment when he was fussing with the other man."
The officers are among the 4,000 non-Milwaukee law enforcement officers who arrived in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention to assist in security, traffic and public safety through Friday.
Body camera footage released by Columbus police show Sharpe was still armed with the knives, and lunging toward the other man, at the time of the shooting. The situation unfolded rapidly, with 15 seconds passing from when officers first noticed he was armed with a knife to when they fired shots.
Angelique Sharpe, Sam's sister, said her brother had multiple sclerosis, a degenerative muscle disease that impacted his mobility.
"If the police had known that, they would have known he wasn't lunging forward. He was stumbling," Angelique told the Journal Sentinel. "Everyone that knew him knew he walked like he was drunk. He stumbled because of the multiple sclerosis."
Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey Norman strongly defended the out-of-state officers in the shooting at a Tuesday press conference.
"Someone's life was in danger," he said. "These officers who are not from this area took upon themselves to act to save someone's life today."
The Milwaukee Area Investigative Team, led by the Greenfield Police Department, is investigating the fatal shooting.
Sharpe's death immediately sparked outrage, with many residents and some officials asking why the officers were roughly a mile from the Republican National Convention's security zone unaccompanied by a Milwaukee police officer.
Angelique questions why the situation between the other man and her brother could not have been solved using de-escalation techniques.
"What's legal and what's moral isn't always the same," said Angelique, a program manager with the Wisconsin Minority Business Development Agency. "People have created ways, protocols, to not have a moral compass about stuff."
Sharpe remembered as someone who'd 'give you everything he had'
Angelique described her brother as a Bible-loving, people-loving, and compassionate unsheltered person.
She clutched her brother's Bible close to her chest while speaking during a rally Thursday at Red Arrow Park. Pages of the Bible were rabbit-earned. Nearly each page had passages circled and notes scribbled in the margins.
"He had it memorized," she said.
Angelique said she can't cite the Bible passage, but she remembers her brother telling her the Bible said that God is impartial. He only sees the heart of people. For some reason, she said, that passage always stuck with her.
"I guess that's why we aren't God. Because in this world, not enough people see other people's heart," she said.
Like Camacho, she recalled how Sam told the family he wanted "all of the houseless people to know that Jehovah loved them and hadn't forgotten about them." He told the family he was "moving in as a neighbor to pray with them, help however he could," despite the fact their mother had renovated the basement of her home for him to live.
She said he would come to see the family often, to rest, eat meals and visit. She visited him at the encampment, too.
"We were part of his life," she said. "But living on his own, living with his other unhoused, unsheltered brothers and sisters ... that's what he wanted to do."
Anyone who knew him knew he loved his dog, Ices. The dog was removed from the scene and led to a cage inside a Milwaukee Area Domestic Animal Control Commission van shortly after Sharpe was shot and killed.
"She was like his child," Camacho said of Ices.
Camacho said he would bring water and ice for Ices in a cooler. And he knew Sharpe preferred Orange Fanta and Tahitian Treat Fruit Punch.
"It was a running joke between us," Camacho said. "I'd bring him those drinks. I knew he preferred them over water."
Eddie Johnson, 55, is a volunteer at the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary. He became homeless about a month ago. Jehovah gave him his first tent, he said.
"He was a beautiful person," Johnson said. "He'd give you anything he had."
Shelly Sarasin and Eva Welch, the founders and directors of Street Angels, a mobile outreach nonprofit that provides food, water and showers to the unhoused, first met Jehovah in April. Sarasin said she last saw Jehovah on Monday when he came to use one of the mobile shower units.
Welch said that he was always grateful and polite and — like others — mentioned he loved his dog and treated her like his daughter.
As he was leaving Monday, he kept saying "I love you guys," Sarasin said. “We might be the last people he said that to."
On Tuesday, Father Mike Bertram gave Sharpe a sack containing some fruit, crackers and granola bars. Bertram is ministry director for Capuchin Community Services, which runs the St. Ben's Community Meal, a nightly meal for the homeless and hungry.
The program serves about 150 people for dinner each night. Potential disruptions from the Republican National Convention prompted volunteers there to also hand out snacks before serving meals later in the evening.
"I told him, 'You may need this,'" Bertram recalled.
Bertram and Sharpe waved to each other as Sharpe headed out the door.
That was around lunchtime. By 2 p.m., Sharpe would be dead.
Those who knew Sharpe are left wondering if his death could have been prevented and question the worth the community places on its unhoused residents.
Camacho and Sarasin stressed his humanity of those living with Sharpe in the encampment.
“When people camp together, they become a community," Sarasin said. "They become a family."
For Camacho, Jehovah — as he called Sharpe — became someone who "brought a spark to his day." He sought him out whenever he visited the encampment near King Park.
"His death is difficult to bear," he said. "It was hard to fall asleep last night."
'It needs to stop': Families of men killed in Milwaukee come together for rally
At Red Arrow Park on Thursday, Angelique and her aunt, Katrina Games, stood alongside members of D'Vontaye Mitchell's family in front of over 150 supporters gathered to mourn Sharpe and Mitchell.
Mitchell was killed June 30 after four security guards at the Hyatt held him facedown on pavement. The guards have been fired and charges have been referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office, but no arrests have been made.
The park itself was significant. It’s where in 2014, Dontre Hamilton was killed by a police officer who woke him from a nap on a bench. Since then, Hamilton’s family has repeatedly shown up at rallies and vigils for others who’ve been killed by police, including Sharpe.
Among signs bearing their loved ones' names, the families marched to the Hyatt, where Mitchell was killed by four security guards.
As they walked through the streets of downtown Milwaukee bordering the Republican National Convention, the group alternated between chanting Mitchell’s name and Sharpe’s name.
Back at Red Arrow, Nayisha Mitchell said she would keep “fighting for justice” for her brother and for Sharpe, and asked more people to join them.
“This could have been your brother, your father, your uncle, your cousin,” she said. “We need to fight together.”
Games echoed her call.
“We come from different places, different homes, different families,” Games said. “It needs to stop."
Reporters Sophie Carson and Chris Ramirez contributed to this story.
Jessica Van Egeren is a general assignment reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at [email protected].
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Samuel Sharpe Jr. found purpose among Milwaukee's unsheltered
