Marris Virgil’s family described a devoted father of three as prosecutors later accused Darrius S. Shelton in his Sept. 4 death.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. — In the day after Marris Virgil was shot to death in a Milwaukee home, his relatives talked about the 37-year-old as a father trying to build a better life. Nearly two weeks later, prosecutors alleged that the violence began with something far more ordinary: an argument over ownership of a PlayStation.
Virgil’s relatives had little public information about the circumstances when they spoke to TMJ4 after the Sept. 4 shooting. They said he was a father of three who spent time with his children, nieces and nephews, had recently started a job and had been working to change his life. The later criminal complaint shifted the public understanding of the homicide. It accused 21-year-old Darrius S. Shelton of first-degree reckless homicide and described a family-linked gathering in which a disagreement over a repaired game console escalated into gunfire. Shelton was wanted on an arrest warrant when the charge became public.
For Virgil’s family, the first public story was about absence rather than evidence. His sister, Shilonda Leavy, told TMJ4, “He was my everything. He was our everything,” while other relatives described his attention to younger family members. His niece, Jameke Hayes, said Virgil took boys to basketball camp and took girls for ice cream and park outings. Cousin Takasha Robinson said he wanted to be the best father he could be. Their accounts did not address the later allegations against Shelton because the detailed charging information had not yet been released.
The relatives were also confronting the task of explaining Virgil’s death to children. Robinson asked how the family could have such a conversation with “little babies,” according to the station. That concern would take on additional significance once the complaint was filed: investigators said children had been inside or immediately around the house when the fatal confrontation unfolded. The document described two young boys and a teenage girl screaming on the front porch when the first responding officer reached the West Keefe Avenue residence. Authorities have not reported that the children were physically wounded.
Police said the shooting occurred at about 6:30 p.m. Sept. 4 in the 1200 block of West Keefe Avenue, near North 12th Street. Virgil suffered multiple gunshot wounds and died at the scene. In the initial days afterward, investigators released few details about what had led to the shooting. They said they believed they were looking for a known suspect but had not announced an arrest. That left the family mourning publicly while the central sequence of events remained largely inside the police investigation.
The criminal complaint filed Sept. 17 supplied that sequence through witness statements and evidence gathered in the home. Virgil’s long-term romantic partner told detectives that she and Virgil arrived at the residence and found their sons, ages 10 and 11, playing PlayStation games with Shelton, who was identified in reports as the boys’ cousin. According to her account, a disagreement then developed between Virgil and Shelton over which man had the right to the console. The complaint does not portray the game itself as the source of the dispute; the issue was ownership of the equipment.
Another witness explained why both men may have believed they had a claim to the system. The witness told investigators that Virgil and his partner had purchased the PlayStation. At some point, however, it stopped functioning properly, and Shelton paid to have it repaired. The complaint says that history became central to the argument over who was entitled to possess it. Virgil’s partner told detectives that she offered Shelton $260 in an attempt to resolve the disagreement. According to her statement, he did not accept the offer.
The dispute then became physical in tone, according to the partner’s account. She told investigators that Virgil and Shelton stood chest-to-chest in an aggressive posture. She briefly turned away. While her attention was elsewhere, she heard multiple gunshots from the direction where the men had been standing. When she looked back, she said, Shelton was holding a firearm. Because she said she had turned away before the shots, the public account in the complaint does not describe her as watching the precise instant each shot was fired.
What she said happened immediately afterward forms another part of the prosecution’s allegations. The woman told detectives that Shelton pointed the firearm at her and threatened to shoot her before fleeing the residence. She was not reported as having been shot. The allegations come from her account to investigators and have not been tested at trial. News reports reviewed for this story do not identify a public statement from Shelton giving his version of the confrontation.
The physical scene confronting police was described in more detail after the complaint was filed. The arriving officer found the children outside and entered the house, where Virgil was on the floor of a second-floor bedroom. Emergency personnel attempted to save him, but he died there. Investigators reported finding spent 9 mm casings in the residence, including two near Virgil and another on a stairway. An autopsy found that Virgil had suffered four gunshot wounds, according to reports based on the charging document.
Those details transformed the case from an initially unexplained neighborhood homicide into a prosecution built around a specific alleged disagreement and a named suspect. Shelton, a Milwaukee resident, was charged with first-degree reckless homicide. Police publicly sought him after a warrant was issued. The charge is an accusation, not a finding of guilt, and nothing in the reliable material reviewed for this article establishes that a court has decided whether the prosecution’s account is correct.
The gap between the family’s first public comments and the allegations that followed also shows how the account of the killing developed over time. On Sept. 5, relatives could speak to who Virgil had been to them, but police were still investigating the circumstances. By Sept. 17 and 18, local news reports were describing witness statements about the console, the repair, the rejected $260 offer and the moments before and after the gunfire. The later information did not replace the family’s account of Virgil’s life; it explained the sequence prosecutors say led to his death.
Hayes told TMJ4 that Virgil had recently come home and changed his life, while relatives emphasized his role with children in the family. The available reporting does not provide enough verified detail to expand on what changes she was referring to, and no further inference is necessary to understand the homicide allegation. What is clear from the family’s statements is that Virgil’s relatives wanted his identity to extend beyond the circumstances in which he died.
The case also left the same children described by family members at the center of two different parts of the story. Before the shooting, according to the complaint, Virgil’s sons were playing video games with their cousin. After police were called, children were found screaming outside the house. The complaint does not accuse them of causing or participating in the dispute. Instead, their presence provides part of the timeline investigators used to describe who was at the residence when the confrontation occurred.
For Virgil’s relatives, the filing of a criminal charge supplied details about what investigators believe happened but did not provide a final resolution. They had described him after the shooting as a devoted father whose death left young children facing his absence. The most recent reliable reporting reviewed for this story did not establish that Shelton had been taken into custody, leaving the family’s call for accountability separate from a judicial process that had yet to determine guilt.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.