The U.S. Postal Service employee who was shot and killed Friday while delivering mail on the north side of Milwaukee has been identified as Aundre Cross.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service out of Chicago confirmed Cross’ identity to the Journal Sentinel. The agency said Saturday it is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those involved in the homicide.

An agency spokesman said it would not be providing any additional information at this time. The Chicago-based agency will be coordinating with Milwaukee Police on the ongoing investigation.

A friend and former co-worker, who asked to be identified simply as Tia R., told the Journal Sentinel she worked with Cross, 44, for seven years before leaving the USPS in 2021 and that Cross had four children. 

“He was a mentor to everybody,” she said. “He was always ready with a prayer, a joke or a story. He never let anybody leave (any situation) without a smile on their face.”

Tia said she met Cross when the two worked out of the Teutonia postal station several years ago. They then worked together at the Hampton Avenue station.

“He has two postal families,” she said. “Two groups of postal workers both past and present who are remembering him.”

Aundre Cross remembered as a positive and caring person

Tia remembers Cross as a person who was always positive, always working to put a smile on someone’s face “whenever they were grieving or going through something.” She has many memories of “getting in trouble with him,” she said jokingly.

“We would get in trouble because we sang ‘Bananas in Pajamas’ every morning at work,” she said laughing. “Then, one time after that, he called me, whispering from the parking lot that the bumper had fallen off his mail truck and he wanted me to come out to put it back on.

“I was like, ‘No, I’m not helping you with that. We just got in trouble for singing!” Tia said. “He always knew how important it was to have fun at work, especially on those shifts when you’re working 12, 14 hours. We always said, ‘you have to laugh to keep from crying.'”

Prior to his beat on Milwaukee’s northwest side, Cross was the postal worker for New Pitts Mortuary located at 2031 W. Capitol Drive in the Franklin Heights neighborhood.  

Owner Michelle Pitts said she is devastated over Cross’ death. Although he left the area, he stayed in communication with Pitts as recently as last month.

“He was reaching out saying he missed the area and he wished that he was still over there,” Pitts said. “He just was checking on me.”

“He was a person that could light up the room,” Pitts added. “When he walked in to deliver our mail, he would literally light the funeral home up because he was always so jolly. He was a man that loved God with everything in him. He was going to make sure he left some type of biblical message with you.”

It was a sad day when Cross left the neighborhood, Pitts said. She spoke about the connection a mail carrier can have with the community.

“Once you see that person, he became a part of — everyday, you see this person every single day — he became a part of us and when he was transferred, we really missed him so much,” Pitts said.

“But he would always reach out, sometimes he would even stop in, just to let us know that he was checking on us and seeing how we were doing. He wanted everybody to be happy. He had one of the biggest smiles on his face … I can see him smile right now. I don’t understand. I don’t understand what happened.” 

Postal workers have been concerned about safety, former co-worker said

Tia said those long shifts have been a concern for many postal workers who are concerned for their safety, something that has just been emphasized by Cross’ death.

Tia said a main reason she left the postal service was that she felt unsafe carrying mail after dark. Cross was shot around 6 p.m. Friday, after the sun had already set.

“We’ve been working longer hours and mail volume has increased,” Tia said. “I know the post office wants to be efficient, but I had to separate myself. I know a few other people who have left for similar reasons. We shouldn’t be out there when it’s dark; it’s not safe.”

Pitts echoed Tia’s concern, saying she used to tell Cross that he shouldn’t be delivering the mail at night, and he would say “I got to do what I got to do.”

“I would say, ‘Be safe, keep your eyes open,’ and he was just the kind of guy that trusted that everything would be OK,” Pitts said.

A link is also circulating on social media that reads, “We’re in Mourning. Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” that includes the USPS image and a black ribbon.

Fatal shooting happened in 5000 block of North 65th Street

The incident took place in the 5000 block of North 65th Street, according to Milwaukee Police. Cross was pronounced dead at the scene by the Milwaukee Fire Department.

As of Thursday, Milwaukee police reported 205 homicides, more than the 193 recorded in all of last year and the 190 reported in 2020, according to the latest data available on the department’s crime statistics dashboard.

“The shooting death of a Milwaukee postal worker is alarming,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said in a statement Friday.  “My thoughts are with the victim’s family and colleagues.”

Police do not have anyone in custody. Anyone with information is asked to contact police at (414) 935-7360, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service at (877)-876-2455, or to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at (414) 224-TIPS or P3 TIPS.

Jessica Van Egeren is a reporter with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She can be reached at jvanegeren@gannett.com.

Our subscribers make this reporting possible. Please consider supporting local journalism by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.

If it were up to us to choose the fates of the performers we care about, millions of people would want to wish Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s away. Few actors of the 1980s and ’90s gave us as much pleasure: On TV’s Family Ties, his characterization of teenage conservative Alex P. Keaton was so artful that even die-hard liberals could get a kick out of it. In 1985, as the charmingly incredulous Marty McFly, he traveled back in time to make a match between his own parents. And in the sharp ’90s-era sitcom Spin City, he played peripatetic New York City deputy mayor Mike Flaherty, doing his best to avert municipal crises despite his bumbling staff. Fox’s nervous energy was a kind of radiance, an animating force that audiences warmed to. After he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991, at age 29, he hid his condition for as long as he could. When he finally revealed his illness to the world, it seemed cosmically unfair that such a likable performer, so gifted at physical comedy in particular, should have to suffer this way.

There’s no way to put a positive spin on Parkinson’s. But how we handle the cards we’re dealt is everything, and Davis Guggenheim’s remarkable documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie reminds us that a person stricken with a disease doesn’t become that disease. Fox’s condition continues to deteriorate as he ages (he’s now 61). Though the boy he used to be is still right there in the impish planes of his face, his limitations have increased; he’s frequently injured as the result of unavoidable falls. But he’s still Michael J. Fox, and Guggenheim, an astute interviewer, paints a picture of where he’s at today that’s unsparing but also terrifically—if also somewhat darkly—funny. When Guggenheim asks Fox where he thinks he’ll be in 20 years, his brow furrows, and it takes a few seconds for the answer to travel from brain to mouth. “I’ll either be dead or … a pickle,” he says, the kind of spontaneous, out-there joke you have to be Michael J. Fox to make.

What’s striking about Still is how celebratory it is. This isn’t the story of a wonderful actor felled by an illness; it’s the story of a wonderful actor, period, beginning nearly at the beginning (with a re-enactment of an incident in which toddler Michael, growing up in Canada, runs off to the local candy store on his own) and moving briskly through Fox’s career, which ambled along for several years before taking off like a rocket. “I was the boy prince of Hollywood,” he says, recalling the multiple sports cars he was able to buy once he hit it big. A vintage TV clip shows Shelley Winters asking him point-blank who he’s sleeping with. Before marrying fellow actor Tracy Pollan, in 1988, he most certainly had his pick.

Guggenheim and his editor Michael Harte make artful use of clips from Fox’s films to illustrate the events of his life. A sequence in which Fox describes a particularly grueling three months, during which he worked on Family Ties by day and spent most of the night filming Back to the Future, is almost alarmingly effective—just watching it makes you feel pooped.

But the most extraordinary scenes in Still are the ones showing Fox with Pollan and their grown children, sitting around the kitchen and making one another laugh—sometimes not in spite of Fox’s limitations, but because of them. One of his greatest gifts is that he can laugh at himself, maybe more so now than ever. At one point in the documentary, Guggenheim realizes he hasn’t asked Fox if he’s in pain. “I’m in intense pain,” Fox answers. When Guggenheim asks why he hasn’t mentioned it at any point during filming, Fox says plainly, “It didn’t come up”—a line so funny it hurts.

Contact us at letters@time.com.

Jurgen Klopp turned up the heat on Newcastle and Manchester United as Liverpool moved within a point of the Champions League spots by crushing relegation-threatened Leicester.

Liverpool registered their seventh consecutive victory, securing qualification for European football in the process, thanks to Curtis Jones’ first-half double and a sensational strike from Trent Alexander-Arnold in the second half.

Both third-placed Newcastle and Manchester United in fourth have a game in hand on Klopp’s team, although such is Liverpool’s momentum that they are firm favourites to take maximum points from their final two games against Aston Villa and Southampton.

‘I have been in that position before,’ said Klopp. ‘You hope the team chasing you loses, and you have that pressure off your shoulders. We have had it in the past, where we have had to win and win and win.

‘I expect Newcastle and Manchester United to do the same but our form keeps them on their toes and that’s our job. We have a super difficult game against Aston Villa at the weekend.

Jurgen Klopp has hailed Liverpool’s ‘crazy run’ of victories in pursuit of a top four finish

Curtis Jones got two of the visitors’ goals as they beat Leicester City 3-0 on Monday night

‘But we have qualified for Europe, which six or seven weeks ago I didn’t believe could happen. There was only one chance to get there, by winning all the games, and that’s what we’ve done. It’s crazy.’

Leicester are two points adrift and could be relegated if Everton win at Wolves on Saturday and the Foxes lose at Newcastle next Monday. They were chants of ‘We are going down’ and ‘You’re not fit to wear the shirt’ from the home fans, many of whom left long before the final whistle.

Dean Smith said: ‘I wouldn’t question our fight or attitude but if you lose at home when you’re fighting relegation, I understand why fans react in certain ways. I still believe we will stay up.’

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Jurgen Klopp hails Liverpool’s ‘crazy run’ of wins which has put them in the European places

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