Sheena Scarbrough told Sade Robinson, 'Baby, Mommy's got this,' the night before trial verdict
Sade Robinson's mother barely slept the night before the verdict was rendered in the trial of Maxwell Anderson in Robinson's death.
During the night, Sheena Scarbrough spoke to her slain daughter.
"I told her, 'Baby, Mommy's got this,'" she said.
Surrounded by family, Scarbrough talked to the media June 6 after a jury in Milwaukee County Circuit Court found Anderson guilty of all four charges — first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, hiding a corpse and arson — in the April 2024 death of Robinson, 19, after they went on a date in Milwaukee.
After initially hesitating to speak, Scarbrough talked about Robinson's smile and her aura. They video-called one another in the days before her disappearance and murder, she said.
"She will be forever remembered as an angel," Scarbrough said. "She is our hero."
She addressed her outburst directed at Anderson at the end of the trial's first week May 31, calling him a "devil." Robinson's uncle, David Scarbrough II, interjected, saying "he is a devil."
The family also addressed the decision by defense attorney Anthony Cotton to disclose that meth pills were found in a safe in Robinson's home. David called him a "clout chaser."
"Dragging my daughter's name in her demise. He was wrong from that one," Sheena said.
She urged people to support missing Black and Brown women, and advocated for a state taskforce to be made.
More: Wisconsin lawmakers tried to create a task force for missing and murdered Black women. Will this year be different?
Verona E. Swanigan, Scarbrough's attorney, noted that Scarbrough's health needs have been put on hold until the trial could be completed. That resulted in her missing a day of the trial due to sleep, Swanigan said. Scarbrough acknowledged that when she spoke.
"I haven't really had a day to grieve since April of last year," she said.
Swanigan thanked the jury, the judge and the community.
"It has been a long year," she said. "It has been a mountain of grief no parent should have to bear."
Swanigan noted that Robinson's family intends to fight for legislation to combat sex-trafficking and kidnapping of women. She acknowledged State Rep. Sheila Stubbs, who stood alongside Robinson's family on the day of the verdict, calling Stubbs "instrumental" in advocating for such policies.
Robinson's family will continue to pursue their civil case against Anderson, Swanigan said.
The family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Anderson in June 2024, and sued the two bars Robinson attended with Anderson on the night of her death in April 2025.
Swanigan added that the family hopes to force Anderson to participate in a deposition so that many of their outstanding questions about Robinson's death might be answered.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Sade Robinson is 'our hero,' mother Sheena Scarbrough says after trial
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Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
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"Love heals? In 1984?" Taibbi asked. "The whole thing ends with Winston broken, saying he loves Big Brother," the symbol of the totalitarian state at the heart of the book. Kirn laughed and added, "It's the kind of revisionist uplift you get from a book club discussion after someone just watched The Handmaid's Tale." Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. Photographs of Eric Blair, whose pen name was George Orwell, from his Metropolitan Police file, c.1940. The National Archives UK Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer, Harvard graduate and professor of literature at American University, also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: "That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all." 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2 hours ago
- New York Post
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