The sentence closes the main criminal case arising from the Milwaukee crash that killed 4-year-old Zekani Hymes-Wilson.
MILWAUKEE, Wis. — The criminal case over the death of 4-year-old Zekani Hymes-Wilson ended with a 20-year prison sentence for Donald Crayton, the Milwaukee man who was driving when a car struck the child and her mother as they crossed North Teutonia Avenue in 2024. Crayton, 33, also received 15 years of extended supervision after pleading guilty to second-degree reckless homicide, hit-and-run involving death and hit-and-run involving great bodily harm.
Zekani’s death had been the center of public grief from the first days after the crash. Family and friends gathered for a vigil in May 2024 while her mother, Gloria Hymes, was still recovering in the hospital. Relatives remembered Zekani as affectionate and playful. A published obituary said she was born in Milwaukee in 2019 and liked dolls, drawing, painting and time with family and friends. Those personal details were largely absent from the later court proceedings, which focused instead on Crayton’s conduct, his driving record and what happened after the collision.
The crash occurred at about 11:25 a.m. April 30, 2024, in the 6900 block of North Teutonia Avenue. The criminal complaint said Hymes, then 27, and Zekani had left their apartment and were crossing the street to get pizza. Surveillance video showed them moving across the roadway before a black Chevrolet Impala struck them. Zekani died at the scene despite an officer’s attempt to revive her. Hymes survived, but prosecutors said she suffered fractures to her right tibia, fibula and femur, along with other injuries.
The relationship between Hymes and Crayton quickly became part of the investigation. Hymes told police from the hospital that the driver shown in surveillance stills was the man she was dating and living with. She identified him as Donald Crayton and said the Impala in the images belonged to him. The complaint also said Crayton’s sister, Destiny Crayton, had been in the passenger seat. She later told investigators that her brother was driving fast, saw Hymes and Zekani crossing and swerved in an effort to avoid them before the impact. Surveillance footage described in the complaint showed a sequence that later supported the hit-and-run charges. After striking Hymes and Zekani, the Impala continued a short distance and stopped in a parking lot. The driver and passenger ran back toward the victims. Roughly a minute later, the man identified as Crayton returned to the car and drove away. Destiny Crayton stayed at the scene and later accompanied Hymes in the ambulance. Prosecutors alleged that Donald Crayton failed to remain at the scene, provide the required identifying information and render reasonable assistance.
The investigation moved from the victims to the car. Police found pieces of vehicle debris at the crash site with part numbers consistent with a Chevrolet Impala. A separate camera image showed a black Impala carrying a plate registered to Crayton. Later that day, officers found a damaged 2019 Impala abandoned on railroad tracks near West Calumet Road. The complaint said damage to the vehicle was consistent with the collision, and a piece recovered from the scene appeared to fit the damaged front area. Investigators also found paperwork in Crayton’s name and identified two fingerprints lifted from the exterior driver-side window frame as his.
Crayton was arrested only after another dangerous episode later that day. Officers spotted him in a Hyundai Tucson driven by Adriana Merkel. When police attempted a stop, prosecutors said Merkel fled. The pursuit stretched 5.1 miles and reached speeds of up to 90 mph on city streets before the Tucson crashed in Wauwatosa. Merkel was arrested in the vehicle. Crayton ran but was caught after a foot chase. Merkel told investigators that Crayton had been upset, had said he could not live with what was on his conscience and had asked for help gathering clothes because he needed to leave. The case then became a long-running court matter. Crayton initially faced a broader group of charges, including operating while suspended causing death, operating while suspended causing great bodily harm, obstructing an officer and soliciting someone to flee police. He eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree reckless homicide and the two hit-and-run counts. The other charges were dismissed, and Law&Crime reported that they were read in at sentencing. That procedure allowed the judge to consider the related conduct while sentencing him on the offenses of conviction.
Another part of the record gave the sentencing hearing additional weight: Crayton had already been convicted in a separate fatal driving case. The 2024 complaint said state court and transportation records showed he had never been issued a driver’s license. It listed a 2017 conviction for operating while suspended, a 2019 felony conviction for operating while suspended causing death in connection with a 2018 crash, and another suspended-driving conviction in 2023. FOX6 reported that he served 10 months in jail and later received three years of probation for the earlier fatal crash. Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Laura Crivello returned to that history when Crayton expressed remorse. Law&Crime reported that the judge noted he had made similar statements during the earlier sentencing and questioned whether they carried the same weight after he continued driving. “I don’t know if I buy the remorse,” Crivello said. She sentenced him to 20 years in prison, followed by 15 years of extended supervision, and ordered him never to drive again.
The case involving Merkel ended separately. She pleaded guilty to fleeing an officer; a reckless-endangerment charge was dismissed as part of her plea deal. Crivello sentenced Merkel to three years of probation in July 2026. Her case addressed the police pursuit that followed the fatal collision, while Crayton’s sentence addressed the homicide, the decision to leave the crash scene and the conduct the court considered from his broader record. Police had also examined whether the collision itself could have been intentional, according to a search warrant described by FOX6. The verified materials reviewed for this report do not establish that Crayton deliberately struck Hymes and Zekani. His sister’s statement to investigators said he swerved in an effort to avoid them, and the final conviction was for second-degree reckless homicide rather than an intentional-homicide offense. That distinction matters because the sentence must be understood through the offenses Crayton admitted, not an investigative theory that was not proved in the final disposition.
For Hymes’ family, the legal outcome arrives more than two years after a routine walk to get food ended with a child’s death and a mother’s serious injuries. The sentencing record now fixes Crayton’s punishment at 20 years in prison and 15 years of supervision, along with the order that he never drive again. No further sentencing date for him was identified in the sources reviewed for this report. The criminal proceedings have produced a legal resolution, even as the loss described by Zekani’s relatives at the 2024 vigil remains outside any term of years a court can impose.
The sentencing also marked a contrast between the language of the court file and the way Zekani was remembered outside it. In the complaint, she appears through timestamps, medical findings, video frames and statutory counts.
In family accounts, Zekani was a child with favorite activities and a large circle of relatives. Keeping those two records together helps explain the final hearing: the judge was weighing criminal conduct and a history of driving violations, while the case itself was rooted in the death of a specific child and the lasting injuries suffered by her mother. Crayton’s sentence does not erase the unresolved personal consequences for Hymes, whose later medical condition was not detailed in the sentencing reports reviewed here. What the public record does establish is the sequence from the April 2024 crash through the recovery of the Impala, the later police pursuit, the guilty pleas and the July 2026 sentencing. That record now serves as the clearest account of how a fatal collision on Teutonia Avenue became a case about hit-and-run conduct, repeated suspended driving and the limits of prior punishment.
Author note: Last updated Sept. 8, 2026.