'I will do it': Man killed mother of his child with gunshot 'right at her face,' then looked at his boy and debated pulling trigger, police say

A 33-year-old man in Wisconsin is accused of chasing down and executing the mother of his child with a bullet to her face during a custody exchange, then telling his sister he was also thinking about killing their young son.

Randall Alexander Lenyard Sr. was taken into custody last month and charged with one count each of first-degree intentional homicide and stalking in the fatal July 16 shooting of 32-year-old Kiana M. Pliska, court records show.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County, police responded at about 6:30 p.m. to reports of gunfire outside an apartment complex on South Packard Avenue in St. Francis, where officers found Pliska lying on the ground suffering from multiple gunshot wounds, including wounds to the head, chest, back and torso. She later died at a hospital.

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A witness told investigators she initially thought the gunshots were fireworks before looking outside and seeing a man standing near the victim’s SUV. According to the complaint, the man briefly walked toward his own vehicle, then returned and “did a downward motion with his arm and fired his gun.” He then walked around the SUV and shot the victim three more times before fleeing in a blue sedan with a child in the back seat.

The child was identified as the couple’s son.

According to the complaint, Lenyard’s sister told investigators she had spent months begging her brother to leave Pliska alone because he had been stalking her. She said Pliska had previously sought a restraining order but failed to appear in court after Lenyard had “sucked her back in.”

The sister told police the pair had arranged to exchange custody of their son on the evening of the shooting. Shortly afterward, she received a text message from Lenyard stating: “I shot her.”

When she called him, he allegedly confessed.

“I f—ing shot her,” he allegedly said. “I lost my s—. I can’t do this s— no more. I’m about to do this to [my son] and myself.”

The sister immediately called 911 while continuing to text him in an effort to learn where Pliska had been shot.

According to the complaint, Lenyard responded with more details.

“She saw me pull my gun out,” he allegedly wrote. “She got out of the car and started to run so I shot her. She started screaming so I knew she was still alive, so I just kept on shooting her.”

He then allegedly added: “I’m about to do it to myself and my son.”

The sister pleaded with Lenyard to let her take the child. He eventually agreed to meet her but warned he would kill both himself and the boy if she arrived with police, the complaint states. They initially agreed to meet at a Best Buy before changing locations to a Walgreens, where she safely took custody of the child.

Even after handing over the boy, investigators say, Lenyard remained conflicted.

“I’m getting the f— out of here because I don’t want to kill my son. I keep looking at him, but I will do it to him,” he allegedly told his sister.

His mother separately told investigators Lenyard had said that if police tried to arrest him, he intended to provoke a shootout so “police would kill him.”

After his arrest, Lenyard allegedly admitted to detectives that he argued with Pliska during the custody exchange before opening fire.

“We started to argue and I [pause] shot her,” he allegedly said.

He admitted shooting her while she was still sitting in the driver’s seat, then firing again as she ran away.

Asked where he was aiming, Lenyard allegedly replied, “Right at her face.”

According to the complaint, he continued shooting after Pliska fell to the ground.

“She was screaming, and I saw blood, and I shot her again,” he said, according to the affidavit.

The stalking charge stems from what prosecutors describe as a monthslong campaign of harassment detailed in a petition for a domestic abuse restraining order that Pliska filed the same day she was killed.

In that filing, she accused Lenyard of placing an AirTag on her vehicle, repeatedly appearing uninvited at her home, contacting her friends and family to track her whereabouts, sending flowers to her workplace, grabbing her by the neck during a February confrontation, impersonating a detective while calling her hairstylist in search of her, and repeatedly threatening to kill both her and himself.

“I’m scared of what he is going to do next,” Pliska wrote in the petition.

The temporary restraining order was granted on July 16. Prosecutors say Lenyard shot and killed her later that same day.

A GoFundMe for the victim’s surviving family can be found here.

The post ‘I will do it’: Man killed mother of his child with gunshot ‘right at her face,’ then looked at his boy and debated pulling trigger, police say first appeared on Law & Crime.