This week an irate crowd of people in Milwaukee set fire to a house suspected of being the center of a sex trafficking ring. I have tried to piece this story together from tweets and videos, and there is no clear narrative. On the one hand it could be a case of a neighborhood doing the job that police refused to do, or it could be a case of hysteria fueled vigilanteism.

On Sunday, June 21, at 9:00 p.m. two runaway girls ages 13 and 15 were reported missing from Milwaukee's North side.

The police decided they were not endangered. An Amber alert requires a specific vehicle description and license plate tag number, so no alert was issued.

Some accounts claim that one girl's mother used a phone app to track her daughter to a house at 2122 North 40th Street (the actual property address is 2120 North 40th, #2122 so I think the house is assigned to the vacant lot next to it).

Others say the house became the focus of attention because it has been long suspected of harboring runaways.

Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales claims that police responded to the house multiple times on Monday and Tuesday, while others allege that the police did not respond to the call for 10 hours.

Accounts differ as to what the police discovered, with some saying the police did not find any children inside, and others claiming the police said no one was inside the house.

However, neighbors stood vigil outside the house and early Tuesday morning, a witness reported seeing 9 kids being loaded into a red Dodge Caravan [license plate redacted] and taken from the property. That van was tracked to a daycare facility not far away, but the owner could not explain how 9 children were picked up at the single stop, and deferred questions to her father who had been driving the van.

At any rate, by 11:00 a.m. Tuesday a gathering of neighbors, frustrated with the minimal police investigation, approached the house and knocked on the door. Shots were exchanged from people inside the house and those gathered outside. No one was injured at that time.

Police did begin to reinvestigate the premises with a forensic team. By early afternoon Tuesday, the crowd had swelled to several hundred people, many of whom were irate with the police and began throwing objects. More police were deployed to the scene to keep the crowd at bay while the investigation continued.

Police brought a "paddy wagon" to the property and backed it up to the rear entrance. At least 5 people including two children, with heads covered to conceal their identities, were then escorted out of the house and into the police vehicle. Were the police trying to protect innocent people from an angry mob? Many believe the police were protecting the guilty. According to the police, they arrested the people who had shot from inside the house.

It's always comforting to see a cop guarding a pedophile investigation with tattoos of a pentagram, a pedo symbol meaning "little boy lover", and the words "pure evil" on his knuckles.

[EDIT: The pentagram tattoo is actually a heartogram which is the trademarked logo of the dark metal band HIM, whose lyrics were "heavily characterized by occult and satanic imagery."]

Police claim that no evidence of missing children was found.

When the police left, several people entered the house and searched a van in the driveway. They claim the house contained childrens items, and inside the van was a pair of bloody boy's shorts. There was also a mattress reportedly in the back of the van, as well as a "false door" in the back which provided an extra hidden space between the van cabin and the actual rear doors.

Recovered from the house was a stack of papers. The top page read: "Wanda in sex. Wanda on sex 56. Wanda Jackson on Sex" which some allege to be a log of sex encounters. One of the pages allegedly referenced a convicted sex offender [name redacted] who may have been living in the house.

The owner of the van lived on the second floor and was among the crowd gathered outside the house. When asked about the bloody shorts in his van, he said he had lent the van to the downstairs neighbors and couldn't give a satisfactory explanation. He ran to a neighboring house, and when the crowd followed him there he allegedly ran from that house and escaped, although one woman watching the back door said no one had exited the premises.

Angry that police had allowed a potential suspect to escape, the angry mob set ablaze the house and van at 2122 North 40th.

Some accuse the police of setting the fire, others suspect one of the adults taken from the property earlier returned to destroy evidence. During one of the livestreams broadcast from the scene, the narrator repeatedly said "that house has got to go." Many, many commenters wrote "burn it down." In all likelihood, it was people from within the neighborhood eradicating the house.

During the ensuing chaos, police shot pepper balls and rubber bullets into the crowd as well as deployed tear gas. Some shots were fired from the crowd with 3 people sustaining injuries.

Neighbors claim a total of 6 houses are involved in a sex trafficking ring. Based on these claims, people searching for the girls were led to a house not far from this first house (some reports put it at 3 miles away). At this second location, the two girls and 2 missing boys were found around 4:00 p.m. Tuesday. According to police, the girls claim they had never been in the house at 2122 North 40th Street, however the police also acknowledge that they did not speak to the girls citing their families as being uncooperative.

[EDIT: A reddit user created this map by superimposing the house's location with a map of the last known locations of victims of sex trafficking.]

Sources and further reading:
https://www.facebook.com/YungLz/videos/2122-n-40th-missing-persons-mkefo...

https://www.facebook.com/ArmyPrince414/videos/4515168908500623/

https://www.facebook.com/100011275926869/videos/1131243817261472/

https://twitter.com/Machistado/status/1275582744198893569

https://twitter.com/Eugene_V_Dabbs/status/1275548492367183872

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1275548492367183872.html

https://www.wisn.com/article/dozens-at-scene-as-police-search-for-missin...

https://amp.jsonline.com/amp/3246406001