On November 21, 2021, Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. drove a sport utility vehicle (SUV) through the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, United States, killing six people and injuring 62 others.

[6] Brooks presented pseudolegal arguments from the sovereign citizen movement[7] and was repeatedly removed from the courtroom for failing to comply with decorum and courtesy.

[13] On November 21, 2021, around 4:39 p.m. (CST), 39-year-old Darrell Brooks drove a red 2010 Ford Escape SUV, moving at about 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), past barricades and through the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha.

[13][23] Police reported that the driver deliberately targeted the crowd, driving in a "zig-zag pattern" to hit as many people as possible.

[29][44][45][34][46][47] A note, that was written according to police records, stated that in his early days in Milwaukee, Brooks was raised without a father but had a supportive mother.

His grandmother wrote a letter to the court that Brooks began living with bipolar disorder at the age of 12, after he was hospitalized for mental health conditions in 1994.

[49] Brooks was arrested on the night of the attack, soon after he told a Waukesha resident that he was homeless and asked to use his phone to call an Uber.

[50] The man was unaware of the events that had occurred and permitted Brooks briefly inside his home, giving him a sandwich and letting him borrow a jacket, but asked him to leave when police arrived.

[54] Following this, in November 2006, he was convicted of a felony statutory sexual seduction after impregnating a 15-year-old girl in Sparks, Nevada.

He pleaded guilty in March 2007 and was sentenced to 12–36 months at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City.

[57] On July 24, 2020, while living in the Milwaukee community area of Arlington Heights, Brooks was charged with second-degree recklessly endangering safety and being a felon in possession of a firearm after he allegedly shot at his nephew and a friend after a fight over a cell phone near a North 19th Street house in the Milwaukee community area of North Division.

[58] Five months and five weeks prior to the Waukesha attack, Brooks was arrested in relation to domestic violence while staying at the Country Hearth Inn in Union City, Georgia.

[72] On January 14, 2022, Waukesha Court Commissioner Kevin Costello ruled in preliminary hearing that Brooks would stand trial due to "ample evidence on all fronts".

Waukesha police detective Thomas Casey testified in the hearing as a witness, saying that he and other officers at the scene yelled at Brooks to stop.

District Attorney Susan Opper counter-argued that all that Brooks had to do was stop and that even if he was intoxicated, he still committed multiple crimes.

[75][76][77] Defense attorney Jeremy Perri entered two motions, requesting in the first one for a different trial in a different county, claiming that Brooks was unlikely to receive a fair and impartial jury trial in grief-stricken Waukesha, citing the "ubiquitous" Waukesha Strong solidarity movement within the county.

[86] These arguments had not succeeded before in criminal trials; Dorow ruled that Brooks was not allowed to argue that he was a sovereign citizen in court, stating that the defense was without merit.

Dorow maintained her position and warned Brooks that if he persisted in raising the issue of jury nullification, he would forfeit his right to give a closing argument.

[3][89] On October 26, the jury returned with guilty verdicts on all 76 counts, after deliberating for a total of three hours and fifteen minutes.

Dorow imposed six back-to-back life sentences without the possibility of parole, one for each of the deceased victims, to be served consecutively.

[95][96] Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers expressed gratitude for the efforts of first responders and good Samaritans, and voiced support for affected families and community members.

[97] Evers ordered the United States and Wisconsin flags to be flown at half-staff the day after the incident in honor of the victims.

[99] Wisconsin senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson released a joint statement, asking people to avoid using the event for political purposes.

Brooks was released on $1,000 bail two days before the attack when he was arrested for allegedly running over a woman with his vehicle during an altercation,[104][105] and the attack came at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic had resulted in courts wanting to reduce jail crowding to reduce risk of infection by giving lower bail requests.

[110] The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported that the contents of Brooks' Facebook account, which contained "Black nationalist and anti-Semitic" viewpoints, and his crime were exploited by white supremacists in order to push racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, claiming Brooks' attack was racially motivated, that he killed his victims specifically because he hated white people, and that left-wing media were attempting to cover up the incident.