31 December 2023
Homicides in St. Paul in 2023 declined from recent years, but are still higher than five years ago.
St. Paul’s homicide rate began increasing in 2019 and peaked in 2022 with 40 homicides. There were 32 homicides this year as of Saturday afternoon. St. Paul averaged 17 homicides a year between 2010 and 2018.
“I’ll never be happy until the numbers are zero,” Police Chief Axel Henry said recently. “They’re still up, as far as above the numbers over the last 15 years. … We’re looking to push those numbers back down.”
Other types of gun violence also declined year-over-year in St. Paul — there were at least 72 fewer people wounded in shootings and 800 fewer reports of shots fired without injuries. St. Paul has been using a “safety net approach,” especially since the city started the Office of Neighborhood Safety in 2022, to get to the root causes of preventing gun violence, Henry said.
Of the 32 people killed, police said four were situations of group or gang violence, and six were incidents of domestic or family violence. The police department plans in the coming year to ramp up its Blueprint for Safety, initially rolled out more than a decade ago, which is a coordinated approach to respond to domestic violence and work to identify who is most at risk of being killed.
When circumstances were known in other homicides, many were arguments or disputes that escalated to deadly violence.
“Very small feuds seem to be leading to violence,” Henry said. “… It’s become more normalized for someone to pull out a gun in a situation that maybe even 20 years ago would have been a fistfight, and that’s not unique to St. Paul … but that’s something we as a community have to fix together.”
Throughout Minnesota, 209 people were killed in situations of murder, nonnegligent manslaughter and negligent manslaughter as of the end of November, according to information reported from law enforcement agencies to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. That compares to 246 victims throughout 2022 and 283 in 2021.
Minneapolis recorded 84 homicides as of Friday, one less than a year earlier; the previous three-year average was 91, according to the city’s preliminary numbers for nonnegligent, negligent and justified homicides.
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St. Paul police have continued to solve homicides at a higher-than-average rate for law enforcement: there has been an arrest or resolution in all except three of 2023’s homicides. “Our investigators wouldn’t work these cases any harder if it was their own grandmother that was killed,” Henry said.
There were high-profile cases that Henry said shocked “the conscience of the community” — including the stabbing of a teen in the hallway of his high school; the killing of a beloved youth hockey coach and dad when a teen was breaking into his wife’s car outside their house; a mother who’d been missing and was found dismembered in a storage unit, allegedly by her boyfriend; and the shooting of a 14-year-old girl that also injured other teens.
“Every one of these murders matters,” Henry said of all the people killed. “It’s not just a life lost, it’s an entire family structure and loved ones around them” that are having to live with an unexpected death.
The Pioneer Press took a look back at who died in St. Paul homicides in 2023 and what allegedly happened in each case:
Devin Scott, 15
Devin Scott (Courtesy of the family)
The stabbing of Scott inside Harding High School on Feb. 10 was the first time the school district or police department could recall a killing inside a St. Paul public school. Another student, who was 16 at the time, was originally charged with unintentional murder and later pleaded guilty to manslaughter.
Scott was a sophomore and it was his first day at Harding. Surveillance video showed Scott and other students walking in the hallway, and then Scott and Nosakhere Kazeem Holmes exchanged words. A fight ensued and Holmes was seen advancing on Scott with a knife, according to a court document. An autopsy showed Scott was stabbed in the chest and abdomen.
Scott’s family said in a statement to the court that “he was a happy, smart, open minded, listener, helper, friend, solver, accountable, and dependable.” He was a little brother to 11 siblings.
Yia Xiong, 65
Yia Xiong in his Vietnam War uniform (Courtesy photo)
Xiong was shot by a St. Paul police officer in the hallway outside his apartment on Western Avenue near West Seventh Street on Feb. 11, after police responded to 911 calls to the building. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension has said Xiong was holding a 16-inch knife at the time.
Xiong’s family said the Hmong-American veteran was deaf in one ear as a result of his involvement in the Vietnam War. They also said he wasn’t a threat, and raised questions about why he was killed.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office continues to review the case to make a legal decision.
Abdullah Arif, 48
Abdullah Arif (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
Arif was working at a West Side tobacco store on Feb. 16 when he asked a man who entered the business to remove a mask that covered his face. Employees later told police they don’t allow people to conceal their identity because of theft and other issues at the store at Stryker Avenue and Stevens Street.
The man in a mask pulled down a door chime that contained a Ring doorbell, Arif followed him outside with a baseball bat to get the chime back, and the man shot him, according to a murder charge. The man, now 22, pleaded not guilty and his court case is ongoing.
Arif, of Stillwater, was “the sole provider to his wife and four children,” a teacher wrote in a GoFundMe for his family, calling his loss “a senseless act of violence.”
Larry Jiles Jr., 34, and Troy Kennedy, 37
Larry Jiles Jr., left, and Troy Kennedy. (Courtesy of the family)
After a funeral reception for an 80-year-old, an argument started and a witness said a 52-year-old opened fire in a parking lot at University Avenue and Dale Street on Feb. 25. The man is charged with fatally shooting his cousin, Kennedy, and Jiles, and wounding three other people.
Jiles and Kennedy were attending the post-funeral gathering. Jiles was known as “Chef Hot Hands” and had a gourmet takeout business in Centerville, Minn. He donated the food for the funeral reception, and his family joined him in serving the guests.
The suspect remains in custody as the court case continues.
Pierre Glass, 55
About 45 minutes before Glass was found stabbed in the chest on March 11, he’d texted his girlfriend’s son. He wrote that Jacquelyn Vann, 51, was drunk and she slapped him, and he slapped her back.
Police saw Vann had scratches on her nose, lips and inside her mouth, along with a bruise on her shoulder and a chipped tooth. In a recorded phone call, Vann said, “We got into it, and we never fought like this before.” They’d been in a relationship for 10 years.
Vann told police Glass pushed her head into the radiator at her residence in the 700 block of Dayton Avenue, she grabbed something and struck him, but said she didn’t know she stabbed him.
Vann pleaded guilty to manslaughter and is due to be sentenced in April.
Gabriella Dehoyos, 21
Gabriella Dehoyos (Courtesy photo)
Dehoyos was a mother of three young children and seven weeks pregnant. She was riding in the back seat of her boyfriend’s car with her children on March 13.
A man, who her boyfriend later said he only knew by his street name, pulled up at St. Anthony Avenue and Marion Street and fired a shot that struck Dehoyos in the back of her head.
Paul Dwayne Harris, 24, pleaded guilty to murder and received a 38½-year prison sentence.
“Gabby wasn’t just a mom, she was the mom,” her sister said in court. “And when it came to her children, her limits were endless.”
Corrina Woodhull, 41
Corrina Woodhull (Courtesy photo)
Woodhull had been trying to get away from her husband, but he kept asking her for another chance, said her longtime friend and roommate.
She was at Bible study with him at his relatives’ Payne-Phalen home on March 21 when he whispered something in her ear, she shook her head “no” and he stabbed her multiple times, according to a criminal complaint.
His family members wrestled him to the floor. He’s pleaded not guilty to murder and his court case is ongoing.
Woodhull was a mother of five who worked at a substance use disorder treatment facility in St. Paul, and often volunteered at nonprofit organizations and ministries.
Za’Maiya Travis, 7
Za’Maiya ingested fentanyl at her mother’s residence in Frogtown and was found dead March 31, according to a criminal complaint. Under crime data reporting guidelines, police counted her death as a homicide from a fentanyl overdose.
Her mother, Shauntajia Travis, had agreed to give Za’Maiya’s grandmother temporary custody so Travis could get help for her drug addiction, and that was supposed to happen April 5.
Travis, now 28, is charged with manslaughter. She’s entered a plea of not guilty and her court case is continuing.
Jadonn Taylor, 23
Jadonn Taylor (Courtesy of the family)
Taylor and his fiancée went to Target on Suburban Avenue to buy Easter presents for their daughter on April 6. He was shot when they returned to their vehicle, and his fiancée drove him to a nearby fire station.
A tipster told police that Taylor’s killing was retaliation for the March homicide of Dehoyos. Paul Dwayne Harris, who was convicted in Dehoyos’ murder, was a friend of Taylor’s.
A man, now 26, is charged with first-degree murder for the benefit of a gang. A jury trial is scheduled for February.
Donshay Hardy, 38
Hardy’s two young children and another child, a relative who was visiting, ran from the family home in the Battle Creek neighborhood on April 8 and asked a neighbor to call 911.
One of the children had tried to intervene after seeing Hardy’s husband with a gun, but the man locked the child out of the room and then gunshots rang out, according to a criminal complaint charging 43-year-old Eddie Webb with murder. A warrant was out for his arrest in the case when he died by suicide.
Webb was previously charged with trying to choke Hardy with one hand while holding a knife with his other hand; the case was later dismissed.
Hardy was remembered by a relative as “very outgoing. … She was always the one who was checking on everybody.”
Tracey Loving, 27
Tracey Loving (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
Officers found Loving shot in an apartment in the 1400 block of East Minnehaha Avenue on April 18. Her 18-year-old cousin, Jonathan Evans, was dead outside.
Police initially said they were investigating the matter as a double homicide. In an update, police said autopsies and more information pointed to Evans killing Loving and then dying by suicide.
Loving was the mother of three, and “was very well loved and had a big heart,” a relative wrote in fundraising for her funeral and for her children.
Manijeh “Mani” Starren, 34
Manijeh “Mani” Starren. (Courtesy of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension)
Starren’s father reported her missing to police on May 1 after she last had contact with her family around April 21.
Video surveillance showed Starren fleeing her apartment on East Seventh Street near Johnson Parkway and her boyfriend, Joseph Steven Jorgenson, pushing her back inside. Video never showed her leaving, and her dismembered remains were found in a Woodbury storage unit on June 28.
“Her beautiful three kids have horrifically lost the most beautiful person in their lives,” Starren’s friend wrote on a GoFundMe for Starren’s children.
Jorgenson, 40, is charged with murder and his court case is ongoing.
As St. Paul police were investigating Starren’s case, they learned that Jorgenson was connected to 33-year-old Fanta Xayavong, who’d last been seen two years earlier.
The investigation led to a Coon Rapids storage unit on July 6, where Xayavong’s dismembered remains were found.
Michael Brasel, 44
Michael Brasel (Courtesy of the family)
Brasel saw from the window of his home in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood on May 6 that someone — later identified as Ta Mla — was rummaging inside his wife’s vehicle, and he went outside to confront him. Kle Swee, who was with Ta Mla, shot Brasel three times.
Brasel was known as a devoted husband, the father of two sons, a coach for Roseville Youth Hockey and a residential carpenter.
Kle Swee was sentenced to 25 years in prison, and Ta Mla to 15 years. Both are 18 years old.
Michael Martin, 35
After multiple people called 911 at 2:38 a.m. on May 13 to report that someone was shot, officers found Martin in a house in the 1000 block of Pacific Street in Dayton’s Bluff. He had multiple gunshot wounds and died at the hospital.
No one has been arrested and police said their investigation continues.
Antuan Jones, 41
Jones was fatally shot in an alley in the Payne-Phalen area on May 20.
A 19-year-old reported that he was involved in the shooting, gave a statement to investigators and turned over the gun he used, police said. Officers found a second gun at the scene of the shooting.
The teen was booked into jail and released the same day. The Ramsey County attorney’s office declined to charge him, saying they couldn’t disprove he was acting in self-defense.
Juan Jose Jimenez-Alarcon, 30
A friend of Jimenez-Alarcon picked him up and brought him to a Frogtown residence to hang out on June 3. Jimenez-Alarcon and Alfredo Arturo Alvarez-Flores, 24, were watching TV and drinking beer.
Another person in the home heard a scream from the living room, but reported it hadn’t been preceded by arguing. He saw Jimenez-Alarcon slumped over the couch and Alvarez-Flores at the front door. He asked what was going on and Alvarez-Flores said, “That’s because he was threatening me,” before running out of the house, according to a criminal complaint.
Officers found Jimenez-Alarcon dead from multiple stab wounds. No weapons were located on or near his body, the complaint said.
Police discovered Alvarez-Flores passed out in backyard bushes at a nearby home. He is charged with murder and his court case is ongoing.
James Harmon, 36
James Harmon (Courtesy of the family)
Harmon was found shot in the head in his bed in the 1100 block of White Bear Avenue on the morning of June 7. His sister has said she was told it was a “random” act.
A man charged with murder is also accused of breaking into a nearby home and holding people hostage before being arrested. Police said at the time they didn’t find anything that linked the 27-year-old suspect to people at that house or to Harmon.
Harmon, who was known as Jimmy, grew up in Jersey City, N.J., and moved to Minnesota after his brother did, his sister said. He’d been the class clown as a kid and that “bubbly” personality continued into his adulthood, but he could also be serious when he needed to be. He had four children and his sister remembered him as “a phenomenal father.”
The suspect’s mother told police he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, schizoaffective disorder, and substance abuse, the complaint said. He’s pleaded not guilty to murder and he remains jailed as the court cases continue.
Richard McFee, 43
Officers responded to a report of an unconscious man near the light-rail train platform at Fifth and Minnesota streets on July 23 and paramedics took McFee to the hospital, where he died of a head injury in the following days.
Surveillance footage showed a man approached McFee from behind and used his fist to hit him once on the side of his head. McFee immediately fell to the ground and was unresponsive.
Police identified a 29-year-old man as the suspect. He said he knew McFee and they previously argued about drugs and money, and McFee recently struck a female friend of his and that’s why he hit McFee, according to a murder charge. He pleaded guilty to unintentional murder while committing a felony and is scheduled to be sentenced in February.
Jermaine Baker, 30
Jermaine Baker (Courtesy of the family)
Baker got off a Metro Transit bus at Third and Earl streets on July 27, ran across the street and began punching a woman who he previously dated, according to a criminal complaint.
A 31-year-old man with the woman, who’d started dating her a few days earlier, shot Baker. One witness said he believed the suspect continued to shoot as Baker ran back across the street, and another said Baker was shot when he stood up and turned away.
The man pleaded guilty to manslaughter and his sentencing is slated for January.
Baker’s sister said at the time he was killed that she was surprised by the circumstances described in the criminal complaint, saying she’d never heard of him laying a hand on anyone.
Robin Lambert, 73
Lambert knocked on the door of a Highland Park home on July 29 and tried to get inside, according to police. Police said there was no connection between the homeowner and Lambert, and it was unknown why he selected that home.
Lambert stabbed the 59-year-old homeowner in the chest during an altercation, and the homeowner stabbed Lambert in the leg.
Both were taken to the hospital, where Lambert died. Police have said the homeowner recovered. Prosecutors determined the homeowner’s use of self-defense was justified and he was not charged.
Lambert was charged with murder in the early 1980s, and was civilly committed as mentally ill and dangerous, court records show. He was sent to the state security hospital. About 20 years later, he was released to a residential treatment facility and began living independently in an apartment. He was released from civil commitment in 2021 and had no new criminal cases since then.
Jonathan Wade, 21
Jonathan Andrew Wade (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
Wade and Damound Jahema Franks, 21, were in a North End residence on Aug. 2 and both had guns in their waistbands, Wade’s brother told police. He said the two were playing with the guns when they accidentally shot each other, according to a criminal complaint.
Wade was fatally shot in the head. Franks also had a gunshot wound to the head; his was non-life-threatening.
Wade was “a father before anything else” to a 4-year-old son, a relative wrote on GoFundMe.
Franks recently pleaded guilty to manslaughter is due to be sentenced in February.
Markee Jones, 12
Markee Jones (Courtesy of the family)
Markee was fatally shot at his grandmother’s residence in the North End on Aug. 5. Police initially arrested his 14-year-old brother before releasing him from custody. Their mother said what happened was “a terrible accident.”
The medical examiner’s office ruled Markee’s manner of death as undetermined, not homicide or accident. The investigation is ongoing, and his death is not currently counted on the St. Paul police official list of 2023 homicides.
Marcus Baker Jr., 20
Baker was on Raspberry Island on Aug. 14 when four to five males approached and one told him to shut off a song he was playing, which was by a local rap artist affiliated with East Side gangs.
The man, who police say was associated with a West Side gang, hit Baker twice in the face and then shot him. A 23-year-old is charged with murder and crime committed for the benefit of a gang. His court case is ongoing.
Devante Jones, 29
Officers were called to Frogtown about shots fired early Sept. 3 and found Jones with multiple gunshot wounds near Sherburne Avenue and Mackubin Street. Jones, of Mankato, Minn., died at the scene.
No one has been arrested and police said the investigation continues.
Khoua Yang, 36
Police responded to a shooting in the Battle Creek neighborhood early Oct. 1 and located Yang in the 2100 block of Scenic Place, which runs between Pederson and Winthrop streets. He’d been shot and paramedics pronounced him dead.
Yang’s obituary said he was from Brown Deer, Wis., which is a suburb of Milwaukee. He is survived by his wife and brother.
An arrest was made in the case and the investigation is ongoing, according to police.
Monica Holley, 14
Monica Joy Holley (Courtesy of the family)
Monica died in a shooting outside an apartment building on Hazelwood Street near East Maryland Avenue on Oct. 4 that also injured 13- and 15-year-old girls and a 19-year-old woman.
She was an eighth-grader at Highland Park Middle School in St. Paul and lived in the neighborhood where she was shot.
Monica “lost her life heartbreakingly as a bystander to a deadly shootout,” her aunt wrote on a GoFundMe for funeral expenses. “… Monica Joy was a natural comedian, she had recently joined the track team at Highland Jr. High School, she loved dancing. … She was so precocious, and her bubbly, joyful laughter will ring in our hearts forever.”
Police haven’t made an arrest and said they continue to investigate what happened.
Randall Williams, 37
Williams and his girlfriend were arguing on Oct. 6 when a roommate, Alvin Rozell Stafford Sr., told him to leave her alone, according to a criminal complaint. Stafford and Williams argued, and Stafford stabbed Williams in the chest in the Snelling-Hamline neighborhood home, a murder charge said.
Stafford, 57, has pleaded not guilty to a charge of unintentional murder and his court case is ongoing.
David Isaac, 23
David Isaac (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
Isaac was found shot in a West Side parking lot on Oct. 23. The day before, he and other young men had been shooting a video, in which they displayed bottles of liquor and a variety of handguns. Police identified Justice Glaspie as taking part, a criminal complaint said.
Surveillance video from later in the evening showed Glaspie, 20, and Isaac appearing to “play fight.”
After police arrested Glaspie, he told investigators that Isaac tried to rob him about two months earlier and he recalled that the night of the shooting “and it fueled him in the moment that led to the shooting,” the complaint said. He said he planned on robbing Isaac, and shot him when he tried to grab the gun, according to a charge of intentional murder.
Shaqita Thomas, 39
Shaqita Thomas (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
A friend of Thomas’ told police she’d been on a FaceTime video call with her on Nov. 15. Thomas was crying and “a man repeatedly yelled” at her in the background, according to a criminal complaint. Thomas told her friend the man was “mad at me for spending the night at the emergency room” with her estranged husband because of her son’s asthma.
Thomas was found dead on Nov. 17, with an air mattress concealing her body in her downtown apartment. She died of asphyxia.
Also on Nov. 17, Kelvin Maurice Perry, Thomas’ boyfriend, was on a call with a childhood friend and told him, “My girlfriend is gone — she is dead,” and walked in front of a light-rail train and was struck, the complaint said. The 54-year-old was hospitalized for his injuries. He is charged with intentional murder, not premediated.
Brandon Keys, 24
Keys shot a St. Paul police officer in the leg and the officer fired back, body-worn and dash camera footage showed of the Dec. 7 incident at Cretin and Marshall avenues. Keys died at the hospital on Dec. 8.
Police were responding to a woman’s 911 call that Keys, who was the father of her child, was chasing her. She had an order for protection against him and he had a gun, she reported.
The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating.
Drew Johnson, 35
A woman called 911 early Dec. 11 and reported an intruder, who she named, at a Hamline-Midway home. A man got on the phone and said he had fired multiple shots at the intruder, who was down in the front porch of the home.
Officers found Johnson on the porch and paramedics transported him to Regions Hospital, where he later died.
Police took the 34-year-old woman and 29-year-old man from the home to police headquarters for interviews. They declined to be interviewed, and were booked into the Ramsey County jail on suspicion of murder before they were released from custody the next day. Police said their investigation is continuing.
Alfonzo Armstead, 30
Alfonzo Armstead (Courtesy of the family)
Armstead was shot as he stood outside a grocery and tobacco store at University Avenue and Arundel Street on the afternoon of Dec. 13. Video surveillance showed the shooter exited a vehicle and walked quickly toward Armstead, whose back was turned to the shooter when he opened fire.
An officer heard the call dispatched about the shooting and saw a 22-year-old man who was carrying clothing that matched the shooter’s and trying to throw them into a dumpster. He was taken into custody. He told investigators he’d found the clothing and said he was attempting to throw away candy wrappers, not the clothing. He said he had nothing to do with Armstead’s killing.
Armstead’s girlfriend told police that he’d recently been “jumped by three men” in front of the store, according to the complaint charging the 22-year-old with murder.
Armstead’s sister, La Wanda Allen, said her understanding was that something happened between the suspect and Armstead two days earlier — “a misunderstanding, I don’t know.”
Originally from Texas, Armstead had been living in Minnesota for about a year. “He was a very sweet, lovable, kind-hearted guy,” Allen said recently. “I’m heartbroken behind all of this and I definitely want justice to be served.”
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