MILWAUKEE - A Milwaukee man convicted in a hit-and-run that seriously injured his ex-girlfriend and killed her daughter was sentenced to prison on Thursday, July 30.
In court:
Court records show 33-year-old Donald Crayton reached a plea deal in May. He was convicted of second-degree reckless homicide and two hit-and-run counts, and four other charges were dismissed.
Donald Crayton
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Judge Laura Crivello sentenced Crayton to 20 years in prison and 15 years of extended supervision.
Adriana Merkel, 23, was also charged in the case. She pleaded guilty to fleeing police, a charge of recklessly endangering safety was dismissed in a plea deal, and Crivello sentenced her to three years' probation on July 2.
Hit-and-run | April 30, 2024
The backstory:
Milwaukee police said Gloria Hymes and her 4-year-old daughter, Zekani Hymes-Wilson, were crossing the street to get a pizza when a speeding driver hit them on Teutonia near Vera. Hymes was seriously injured, and Hymes-Wilson was killed.
According to a search warrant, investigators looked into the fatal hit-and-run as an intentional act. Hymes was Crayton's live-in girlfriend at the time, prosecutors said.
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Zekani Hymes-Wilson
Video from the scene showed a man and a passenger got out to check on the victims before the man ran back to his vehicle and sped away. Authorities later identified that man as Crayton and the passenger as his sister.
Hours after the fatal hit-and-run, police found Crayton's damaged vehicle ditched on train tracks on Calumet between 81st and 87th streets. Officers tracked him down later that night after prosecutors say he and a woman, Adriana Merkel, led police on a high-speed chase and crashed at 72nd and North in Wauwatosa. Merkel told investigators she, too, was Crayton's girlfriend.
Dig deeper:
Court records show Crayton was convicted of hitting and killing a man while driving in 2018. He served 10 months in jail and was eventually given three years of probation in 2019. The criminal complaint filed against him in 2024 showed his traffic offenses dated back to at least 2015, and he never had a valid driver's license.
The Source: Information in this story is from the Milwaukee Police Department, Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office, Wisconsin Circuit Court and prior coverage of the case.