Star Tribune
Mother of mastermind behind deadly home invasion that killed Zaria McKeever charged as an accomplice
The mother of Erick Haynes, the man sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the deadly Brooklyn Park home invasion of his ex-girlfriend, was charged Wednesday as an accomplice for her alleged role in failing to report Haynes’ plot.
Valesha G. Parker, 47, of Minneapolis, faces four felony counts of aiding an offender – accomplice after the fact in connection with the death of 23-year-old Zaria McKeever, whose slaying at the hands of two teenagers conscripted by Haynes outraged community members and resulted in a rare intervention by Gov. Tim Walz.
Parker was charged via summons by the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office and is not yet in custody. State prosecutors accuse Parker of harboring at least one of the shooters in her hotel room after the murder and repeatedly lying to police about her knowledge of the crime.
Parker is the third immediate relative of Haynes’ to be criminally charged in the case. Haynes’ sister and brother-in-law, Eriana Haynes and Tavion Michael Darnell James, both 25, were each sentenced last month to roughly 3½ years in prison after pleading guilty to aiding an offender after the fact. James is also required to spend one year in the the county workhouse along with five years’ probation.
According to the criminal complaint and previous court testimony:
Haynes had a history of violating domestic no-contact orders against McKeever, the mother of his child. In the days leading up to her death, Haynes repeatedly stalked and harassed her, angry that she had starting seeing another man.
On Nov. 8, 2022, Haynes drove two teenage brothers to the Brooklyn Park apartment complex where McKeever’s new boyfriend lived. He handed the younger boy, then 15-year-old Foday Kamara, a 9-millimeter handgun and waited in the car as the teens went inside.
They kicked in the door, hoping to confront McKeever’s boyfriend. Instead they found her. She refused to let them get to her partner.
Foday Kamara unleashed a flurry of shots, striking McKeever five times at close range. One round struck his older brother, John Kamara.
Haynes drove them to a nearby hotel in Brooklyn Center, where he and other relatives had booked a room. His sister, brother-in-law and Parker were all inside when they arrived and present as Foday admitted aloud: “I shot my brother,” charges say.
After Eriana Haynes and James took John Kamara to the hospital, Foday told Parker that he’d also shot McKeever, according to court records. Parker responded that he “shoulda never listened to” Haynes and that her son “was wrong for putting [Foday] in this predicament.”
Later that night, Parker was lying on the bed as Haynes instructed Foday to clean and hide the murder weapon in the wheel well of a vehicle in the hotel parking lot, charges say. That’s where investigators later found it.
Under questioning from police, Parker claimed she had no knowledge of Haynes’ activity that night and did not know that Eriana Haynes drove anyone to the hospital. She also couldn’t explain why Foday was found in her hotel room.
“Where the hell did he come from?” she said, according to the criminal complaint.
Attorney General Keith Ellison’s office took over prosecution in the controversial case in March 2023, amid outrage over plea agreements offered by Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty that would have spared the teen shooters adult prison time. The deals were widely decried as too lenient and Gov. Walz reassigned the case to Attorney General Keith Ellison at his request.
In May, Judge William Koch accepted Foday Kamara’s guilty plea to aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder and sentenced him to a 10-year term.
John Kamara, who was 17 when McKeever was killed, was spared adult prison and is serving a two-year sentence in a juvenile facility.
Erick Haynes pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in March, avoiding a lengthy trial, and was sentenced to life in prison in April.
Star Tribune staff writer Paul Walsh contributed to this report.
Minnesota test scores remain stagnant with only about half of students meeting or beating grade-level standards in math and reading, new data shows.
The state’s achievement gaps, among the largest in the country, persist, as well, with only slight changes by race and ethnicity, according to the state Department of Education.
“We need all students to succeed and thrive in school,” state Education Commissioner Willie Jett said in a statement accompanying Thursday’s release of 2024 data for the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments (MCAs), which he said will help guide his department’s efforts to support school communities.
A potential bright spot in this year’s results: a drop in the percentage of students marked chronically absent from school in 2022-23, the latest year for which data is available.
Scores in reading and math have dropped about 8 percentage points since the COVID-19 pandemic, but the lack of yearly progress to significantly boost proficiency or ease achievement gaps between white students and students of color was established years before the pandemic disrupted student learning.
Minnesota first saw a dramatic plunge in pandemic-era test scores in 2021, when 53% of students met state standards in reading, down 7 percentage points from 2019, and 44% were considered proficient in math, an 11% decline from the previous test. Tests were not administered in 2020.
But more than 20% of the state’s students did not take the tests during the spring of 2021, clouding the true effect of the pandemic on academic achievement. This year, 7% of students sat out the math tests and 5% did not take the reading exams.
Statewide, about half of students tested proficient in reading this spring and about 45% met or exceeded their grade-level standards in math — outcomes nearly identical to those in 2023.
Opening act: Dillon Carmichael, 30, is well connected. He is the nephew of Nashville vets John Michael Montgomery and Eddie Montgomery of Montgomery Gentry. Plus he worked as a security guard at the Grand Ole Opry. The Kentuckian knows how to mine country cliches (“Red White Camo and Blue”), deliver bluster (“Pickin’ Up Girls,” “Big Truck”), reach for the sentimental (“Dancin’ Away My Heart,” “Son of A”) and turn a clever phrase (“Hot Beer,” “Sawin’ Logs”).
Jon Pardi's Performs on the Grandstand at the State Fair
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