The recordings helped investigators reconstruct the confrontation that ended with Ashley Hudson dead and her teenage brother charged as an adult.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. — Two people who heard a family fight outside in downtown Milwaukee began recording on their phones, creating a visual record that would later help investigators reconstruct how an argument involving sisters, a baseball bat and a knife ended with 30-year-old Ashley Hudson being fatally shot by her teenage brother.
More than a year later, those recordings remained central to the case as Hezile J. Frison, now 16, was sentenced Sept. 25 to 20 years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision. Frison was 15 on June 16, 2025, when prosecutors said he obtained a gun from his mother’s vehicle and shot Hudson as she backed away. The videos also became important because authorities said they contradicted parts of the accounts initially given by Frison and other relatives after the killing.
The recorded confrontation began before Frison had a gun in his hand. According to the criminal complaint and local reporting based on court records, family members had gone to confront Hudson over social media posts. Two women were seen fighting with her, and one was using a baseball bat. At one point, Hudson tried to enter a parked car as the attack continued. The complaint said the women kept thrusting the bat toward her. Hudson then came back out with a knife, holding it in a manner investigators described as intended to keep the others away.
That sequence became important because investigators were not left only with competing family accounts about who moved toward whom or how the confrontation unfolded. The phone footage provided another record. Prosecutors said Frison retrieved a firearm from a car belonging to his mother, Tara Hudson, and then pointed it toward his sister. Voices on one recording could be heard telling him not to shoot. Authorities said Ashley Hudson was backing away with her hands raised when Frison fired into her chest from close range.
Emergency responders pronounced Hudson dead at the scene. Milwaukee police said the shooting occurred at about 11 p.m. on the 300 block of West Vliet Street. Within four days, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office had issued criminal charges against three members of the family. Frison was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. His sister Aaliyah J. Frison faced aggravated battery allegations tied to the fight, and Tara Hudson was charged with obstructing an officer.
The videos also shaped investigators’ evaluation of Frison’s first statements. Prosecutors said the teenager initially denied being present. After detectives showed him screenshots from the recordings, however, he identified himself and acknowledged his role. He then said Ashley Hudson had “ran up” on him before he fired, according to the complaint. Investigators concluded the recording showed something different: Hudson was moving backward rather than advancing on him in the moments before the gunshot.
Police said Frison’s reaction after learning his sister was dead added another troubling element to the investigation. According to the complaint, he asked, “What’s that got to do with me?” Detectives then asked whether he was sorry, and Frison said he was prepared to serve time because he had committed the crime. Those statements were documented in the prosecution’s early account and later resurfaced when the case reached sentencing, where the court had to evaluate Frison’s conduct alongside his age and background.
Tara Hudson’s initial account also drew scrutiny because of what the recordings showed. Prosecutors said she first told police she had been farther away and could not see who fired. The complaint, as described in local reporting, placed her much closer to the shooter and said she appeared to be trying to stop him. At the police station, she later acknowledged seeing the shooting and told investigators Ashley Hudson had been backing away while holding the knife close to her body. Tara Hudson ultimately pleaded guilty to resisting or obstructing an officer.
Aaliyah Frison’s role was similarly assessed against the recorded evidence. Prosecutors said she was seen swinging a baseball bat and chasing Ashley Hudson. Court filings reported by local media said she admitted taking part in the fight but disputed some aspects of her involvement that investigators believed were visible on video. She eventually pleaded guilty to aggravated battery with a dangerous weapon. A judge imposed two years in prison and two years of extended supervision but stayed those terms, placing her on two years of probation.
The case against Hezile Frison took a different path because he was accused of firing the fatal shot. Wisconsin authorities prosecuted him in adult court even though he was 15 at the time. The original first-degree intentional homicide charge exposed him to a far more severe potential punishment. On July 29, 2026, however, he pleaded guilty to the amended offense of first-degree reckless homicide. The guilty plea resolved the question of criminal responsibility without a jury trial and moved the case directly toward sentencing.
At the Sept. 25 hearing, the focus shifted from reconstructing the shooting to deciding what punishment should follow it. Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge David Borowski referred directly to the chaos visible during the fight, describing family members yelling and people swinging a bat. He told Frison that despite the teenager’s age, he had walked up to his sister and shot her as she was backing away. The judge’s comments reflected how strongly the documented sequence of events had come to define the case.
Frison told the court he was sorry. When Borowski pushed him to say more, Frison said, “I want to bring her back.” The judge answered that he could not and described the killing as a violent and selfish act. Borowski also referred to Frison’s difficult upbringing, making clear that the court had considered mitigating information about the teenager’s background. But the judge ultimately concluded that the seriousness of killing Hudson demanded a long period of incarceration.
Frison received 20 years in prison, followed by 10 years of extended supervision. He was also ordered to pay $1,800 in restitution. The sentence came 15 months after the shooting and roughly two months after his guilty plea. By then, the related cases against Aaliyah Frison and Tara Hudson had already been resolved. Tara Hudson’s seven-month correctional sentence was stayed, according to court records reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and she was placed on 12 months of probation.
The recordings did more than document the instant of violence. They preserved the stages by which the confrontation escalated and gave investigators an independent basis for testing statements made afterward. That distinction mattered in a case involving several family members who had different legal exposure and different roles in the events. The footage did not eliminate every question about why the dispute had reached such an extreme point, but it provided prosecutors with a timeline that could be compared against interviews and physical evidence.
Local reporting later described Hudson as a mother of four. Family members said after her death that tensions among relatives had existed well before the June fight. Some relatives described a history of arguments, while court records cited by local media showed earlier legal conflict between Hudson and her mother. The homicide case, however, focused on the specific confrontation outside Hudson’s residence and the actions recorded during its final minutes, rather than assigning criminal responsibility for years of family discord.
After Frison’s guilty plea and sentence, the cellphone recordings will not have to be presented to a jury in a homicide trial. Their importance remains embedded in the court record: they helped investigators challenge early statements, establish the sequence before the shooting and support the prosecution that ultimately ended with Frison accepting responsibility for first-degree reckless homicide. He now faces two decades in prison before beginning another 10 years under extended supervision.
Author note: Last updated November 9, 2026.