Courtroom 4B in the Kenosha County Courthouse smelled like polished oak and unresolved rage on that crisp December morning in 2025. The air hummed with the low murmur of a dozen uniformed officers – badges gleaming like accusations – and the faint rustle of tissues from the front row, where Stephanie Brennan sat ramrod straight, her widow’s veil of grief a tangible shroud. At the defense table, shackled but smirking, sat Derek Mullins: 16 years old, all sharp angles and borrowed bravado, his orange jumpsuit a garish contrast to the somber blues and grays around him. He wasn’t sweating the noose tightening around his neck. Not yet.

The screen at the front flickered to life, projecting a photo that sliced through the tension like a switchblade: Officer Michael Brennan, 34, in full dress blues, American flag draped behind him like a hero’s cape. The image was from three years back, his promotion to senior patrol officer – broad shoulders squared, jaw set with quiet pride, a hint of a smile that said he’d stare down hell itself for the badge. And his girls. Always for his two little girls, ages 6 and 9, who idolized their daddy’s stories of midnight chases and school-crossing waves. Mike was the good guy, the one who coached T-ball on weekends and grilled burgers for block parties in their quiet Kenosha suburb. The cop who pulled over speeders with a warning and a dad joke, not a gun drawn.

Derek Mullins looked up at the screen and… smirked. Not a twitch of remorse, not a flinch of fear. A full-on, cocky curl of the lip, like he’d just heard the punchline to a sick joke. The kind of expression that whispers, This is funny. Me, ending you? Hilarious. Heads turned in the gallery. Stephanie’s knuckles bleached white on her clenched fists, her breath hitching like a sob swallowed whole. Prosecutor Patricia Vance, mid-sentence on closing arguments, paused, her eyes narrowing to slits. The officers shifted, leather creaking like suppressed thunder. And from his elevated bench, Judge Richard Callahan – 61, silver-haired, with 35 years on the circuit under his belt – watched. Really watched. His face, usually a mask of measured neutrality, hardened like cooling steel. A vein pulsed at his temple. The shift was seismic, subtle as a fault line cracking.

Derek didn’t clock it. He was too busy doing the math in his head, the juvenile delusion that had carried him through the trial like a shield. Sixteen. Minor. The system’s got my back. He’d gambled everything on it four months earlier, on that rain-slicked August night when karma came calling in a patrol car. Derek, fresh off a joyride in his buddy’s stolen Charger – boosting mailboxes, tagging walls with gang scrawl – spotted the blues pulling up behind him on Sheridan Road. Panic hit like bad acid. He bailed at the light, sprinting into the shadows of an alley behind the old mill, heart slamming. Mike Brennan gave chase on foot, radio crackling: “Suspect fleeing eastbound, 10-4.” No backup yet; Mike was solo, as always, too trusting of the kid’s youth.

That’s when Derek turned. Whipped out the .38 his cousin had “loaned” him for protection – protection from rivals, from cops, from consequences. Two shots, point-blank. The first caught Mike in the shoulder, spinning him; the second, center mass, dropping him like a felled oak into a puddle that bloomed red under the sodium lamps. Derek bolted, ditching the gun in a dumpster two blocks over, whispering to himself: He’ll live. Kids like me get slaps on the wrist. But Mike didn’t live. He bled out waiting for the ambulance, his last words a garbled “Suspect… armed…” into the radio. Father of two, 34 years young, gone for a prank gone lethal.

The arrest was swift – prints on the Charger, witnesses spotting the orange hoodie, Derek’s dumbass Snapchat story from the night before: “Outrun the pigs or die tryin’ 😂.” By trial, the evidence was ironclad: ballistics match, security cam freeze-frames of that alley sprint, even a jailhouse snitch spilling Derek’s boasts about “poppin’ the blue.” The jury – eight women, four men, Kenosha locals still raw from 2020’s unrest – took three hours. Guilty on all counts: first-degree intentional homicide of a peace officer, endangering safety by use of a dangerous weapon, felony murder. Maximum exposure: life, no parole.

But Derek? He strutted into sentencing like it was a formality. Juvenile court transfer? Denied early; the brutality screamed adult court. Counselors testified to his “troubled home” – absentee dad, mom’s pill haze, gang whispers in the high school halls – but Derek tuned it out, doodling teardrop tats on his legal pad. Max? Ten in juvie, out by 26. College, maybe. Clean slate. He smirked at Mike’s photo because, in his warped teen calculus, it was already ancient history. A speed bump on the road to redemption.

Then Judge Callahan cleared his throat, and the room went tomb-silent. At 61, Richard Callahan wasn’t some greenhorn; he’d presided over Rittenhouse’s circus in 2021, navigated the Jacob Blake riots’ fallout, sentenced killers who’d make Derek’s skin crawl. A Reagan appointee vibe – tough on crime, merciful on the redeemable. But redeemable? Not after that smirk. “Mr. Mullins,” he began, voice like gravel under boot heels, “you sit here, a boy of sixteen, and gaze upon the face of the man whose life you extinguished. Officer Brennan, who ran toward danger not for glory, but to keep streets safe for boys like you. And you… smile?” A pause, heavy as the gavel he hadn’t yet swung. Stephanie Brennan let out a choked gasp; an officer in the back row muttered a curse.

Callahan leaned forward, eyes locked on Derek’s, which finally flickered with unease. “Youth is no armor against atrocity. You didn’t just end a life; you ambushed the thin blue line that guards us all. For a stolen car? Two bullets into a father’s chest? No, Mr. Mullins. Society doesn’t rehabilitate monsters who mock their victims from the dock.” The words landed like indictments. Derek’s smirk evaporated, replaced by a dawning pallor. The judge flipped the script on Wisconsin’s blended sentencing – no cushy juvie detour, no parole whispers after 25. “Life imprisonment, without the possibility of extended supervision.” Life. No out. At 16, the youngest lifer in state history, eclipsing even the Waukesha parade butcher’s runners-up.

The gallery erupted – Stephanie’s sob breaking free, officers rising in a ripple of nods, Vance’s fist pumping subtle triumph. Derek crumpled, whispers of “What?” to his public defender, who could only shake her head. Handcuffs clicked anew as deputies hauled him toward the steel door, his bravado a puddle at his feet. Outside, Kenosha’s winter wind whipped protesters’ signs: “Justice for Mike – No Mercy for Murderers.” Blue Lives Matter rallies swelled overnight, badges from Milwaukee to Madison converging on the courthouse steps, chanting Brennan’s name like a hymn.

For Stephanie, it’s a hollow hammer blow. “He smirked,” she told reporters later, voice raw in the courthouse shadow, clutching a locket with Mike’s photo – the same one from the screen. “Like my husband’s death was a meme. Our girls… they won’t grow up with bedtime stories from Daddy. Soccer games without his cheers. And that boy? He thought his age was a get-out-of-hell-free card.” The Brennans’ home, once alive with crayon walls and Lego forts, echoes now with absences. Little Emma, 6, asks when “the bad dream ends”; Sophie, 9, wears her dad’s old badge like a talisman to school.

Derek’s side? A fractured family unspools in the aftermath. Mom, tear-streaked in the back row, blames “the system that failed him first” – underfunded schools, absent mentors, the gang graffiti that lured him at 14. Cousin who supplied the gun? Facing accessory charges, his “protection” now a noose. Derek himself, in a leaked psych eval, mutters regrets laced with rage: “I didn’t mean to kill him. Just scare. Now I’m the monster?” But Wisconsin’s ironclad: no appeals on youth alone, not after that courtroom sneer sealed his fate.

As snow dusts Kenosha’s squad cars, Judge Callahan’s gavel echoes beyond the bench – a warning to the reckless young: Age buys time, not impunity. Derek Mullins, smirking no more, faces decades in a 6×9 cell, the youngest lifer etched in Badger State lore. Mike Brennan’s photo? It stays projected in memory, a sentinel smile reminding why some lines can’t be crossed. In a county scarred by division, this sentencing isn’t just justice; it’s a full stop. For the cop who ran toward the shots. For the girls who lost their hero. And for the teen who bet wrong on mercy – and lost everything.