Last defendant sentenced to 37 years in mass shooting at St. Paul bar that left one dead, 14 injured
Aug 8, 2023, 1:47 PM
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — A St. Paul man was sentenced Tuesday to nearly 37 years for his role in a mass shooting at a bar that left one person dead and 14 others injured.
Jurors found Terry Lorenzo Brown Jr., 35, guilty in June of second-degree intentional murder, four counts of attempted murder and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Ramsey County Judge Carolina Lamas sentenced him to 36 years and nine months on the murder conviction, with lesser sentences on the other counts. The sentences will run concurrently.
The Star Tribune reported that Lamas handed down the sentence in a courtroom packed with family and friends of Marquisha “Kiki” Wiley, the 27-year-old veterinary technician killed by a bullet fired from Brown’s gun during the melee inside a crowded bar called the Seventh Street Truck Park in 2021.
Brown is the second person sentenced in the gunbattle. Devondre Trevon Phillips, 31, of Las Vegas, was sentenced to 29 years in June for firing the first shots. Phillips and Brown exchanged gunfire, striking each other and a dozen bystanders. Prosecutors have said Phillips and Brown were in a dispute over domestic abuse allegations involving Brown and the woman he was dating, whom Phillips, a former St. Paul resident, described as a cousin of his.
Defense attorney Stephen Grigsby said Phillips was responsible for causing the carnage and Brown simply responded to being shot.
The judge said it was undisputed that Phillips fired first but Brown acted unreasonably by spraying bullets in the crowded bar in response.
Brown apologized to Wiley’s family and all others affected by the shooting. But he maintained that, as Phillips shot him and continued firing while Brown was down on the ground, he did what “I believe anyone would’ve done in the same situation and scenario.”
Minnesota inmates generally serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and the rest on parole.
