Mayor Barrett Says Anyone Would Have Done What He Did

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett faced a crowd of reporters and neighbors in front of his house this morning to give a brief account of the incident that sent him to Froedtert Hospital Saturday night with broken bones in his hand, broken teeth and other serious injuries.

Barrett played down the idea that he acted heroically.

“I can’t think of anyone who wouldn’t have responded as I did,” Barrett said. “When someone says ‘Call 9-1-1,’ you call 9-1-1.”

Barrett recalled how he and his family made a last minute decision to go to the Wisconsin State Fair which is why his security detail was not with him.

His wife Kris was in California visiting relatives and “I was looking for a way to avoid making dinner,” Barrett said.

Barrett attended the fair with two of his daughters, one of his sisters and her daughter, Molly, and his brother John and John’s wife.

“Everything was going great until we left,” he said. “My two daughters and Mollie said they heard someone yelling ‘Call 9-1-1’ and we thought it was a problem with the baby. But within seconds we realized the problem wasn’t with the baby but with the man.”

Barrett has a laceration of about 5 inches running from his left cheek down across his mouth and his chin and a cast covering his right hand and arm up to his elbow.

Barrett said he was still feeling weak and that his mouth and hand hurt. He saw a doctor about his hand earlier in the morning and is scheduled to return later in the week.

He walked slowly to the microphone and appeared weak but seemed to gain strength as he made his remarks and answered a handful of questions.

Barrett said he didn’t want to go into much detail about his assailant for legal reasons but he did respond to a question about the comment by the suspect’s mother accusing Barrett of causing the attack.

“My first reaction is that’s pretty bizarre but Kris had a different reaction,” Barrett said. ”Kris’s reaction is that a mother’s love is blind and maybe that’s right.”

Barrett’s Chief of Staff Patrick Curley confirmed that Barrett broke the bones in his hand when he threw a punch defending himself.

“It all happened so fast,” said Curley. “One second, Tom was reaching for his cell phone to call 9-1-1 and was telling this guy to calm down and then the guy knocks the phone out of his hand and begins stomping on it yelling ‘Don’t call 9-1-1, put the phone down, I can shoot everyone here’.”

Barrett then turned to his sister and said “Betsy, get the kids out of here,” and the next thing he remembers, according to Curley, “the guy hit him in the stomach and yelled at him to lie down on the ground.

“That’s when Tom thought ‘I’m not going to lie on the ground’.”

Curley said at that point Barrett threw a punch and the guy started pummeling him with a metal pipe.

According to Curley, most city business is being conducted without interruption. Barrett was scheduled to
be on vacation this week and department heads have been told to “just keep working.”

The proposed city budget is due at the printer in about four weeks, Curley said, and the mayor has a number of decisions to make before then, including one concerning four proposed furlough days for city staff. Another important pending issue is a critical vote by the city Pension Board scheduled for next week.

Curley said the mayor is being briefed daily.

Curley said Barrett and Gov. Doyle had spoken yesterday about the proposal to transfer control of Milwaukee schools to the mayor and that is expected to move forward. A meeting of the Mayor’s MPS Innovation and Improvement Advisory Council scheduled for this week has been pushed back until September 8.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the man suspected of beating Mayor Barrett, Anthony J. Peters, 20, of West Allis is scheduled to appear in court today.

Watch a video of the Mayor’s press conference at WISN.com.

A portion of the proceeds from the sales of this t-shirt benefit the Mayor’s Task Force on Domestic Violence. Click the image to learn more.