Star Tribune
Shooter fired from behind fence, killed north Minneapolis man in his car
A Bloomington man was charged with murder Friday after police said they used surveillance video to place him behind a fence where shell casings were found at the scene of North Minneapolis shooting last month.
Dameon Markese Collins, 23, of Bloomington faces second-degree murder charges in the death of Carl Maurice Woodard, 55, of Minneapolis and is being detained in Hennepin County jail on $1 million bail.
According to the charges:
Police were dispatched to a shooting on the 3500 block of Penn Ave. N. a little before 11 p.m. on June 28. They found a parked car with 13 bullet holes in it. Woodward was in the driver’s seat, unresponsive. His death was later ruled a homicide.
Officers determined the shooting likely came from a hole in a fence that was situated directly next to the passenger seat of the car where Woodard was found. The Minneapolis crime lab found 23 shell casings behind the fence.
Surveillance footage from the area later identified a white Chevy Tahoe that was parked two houses down from Woodard’s car. Police say Collins got out of the car and proceeded to navigate to a nearby alley before walking between two houses on the 3500 block of Penn Ave. to a fenced area near the victim’s car.
The video then shows several muzzle flashes. Shortly afterward Collins is seen running from the scene and getting back into the Tahoe. Phone records also place Collins at the scene of the crime.
After being placed under arrest, Collins gave a statement to police where he acknowledged that he drives a white Tahoe, was wearing the same clothes as the man seen in the surveillance videos and that he knew there was a hole in the fence on the 3500 block of Penn Ave. Collins stated then when he got out of his car it was because he was going to talk to a girl.
Collins is also charged with possessing a pistol without a permit, a misdemeanor. He is due in court next week.
A repeat felon has received a 20-year term for breaking into a St. Paul woman’s home that he targeted for burglary in the middle of the night and raping her at gunpoint.
Deonte Marquon Thomas, 34, of Maplewood, was sentenced Tuesday in Ramsey County District Court after pleading guilty to first-degree criminal sexual conduct and first-degree burglary in connection with the break-in and sexual assault on April 15 shortly after 4 a.m. in the 300 block of S. Snelling Avenue.
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Thomas is expected to serve roughly 13¼ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
Thomas’ criminal history in Minnesota also includes convictions for theft, receiving stolen property, domestic abuse and illegal weapons possession.
According to the charges:
Officers arrived at the home in the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood, and the woman said her attacker had run off about 10 minutes earlier.
The woman said she was sleeping, then heard pounding on one side of her residence and saw a man break the door and enter. She said Thomas took cash from her purse before he raped her at gunpoint and choked her. At one point, she bit Thomas on the arm “as hard as she could” during a brief struggle for the gun, the complaint read.
Exterior surveillance video showed a pickup truck in the alley near the woman’s house around the time of the break-in with the license plate visible. A police check showed the pickup was registered to Thomas. A still image from a second security video of a man walking on the woman’s property was shown to her by police, and she identified him as her attacker.
That bench is courtesy of contractor AJ Penkert, who has helped numerous families make pet-friendly adjustments to their homes. He helped Tan — who moved into her home last year knowing she wanted to make it the best place for her cats — put the room together, installing pet-proof flooring that can weather even then biggest cat-trastrophy. It is scratch-proof and makes for easy clean-up without holding any smells, he said.
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A man in his 20s is dead from a shooting Tuesday evening in Minneapolis that stemmed from an altercation among a group of people, according to police.
The incident was reported about 7 p.m. near the intersection of 1st Avenue S. and East 19th Street, where the victim died from his injuries.
Officer Trevor Folke, a spokesperson for Minneapolis police, said a group of people were hanging out on the street when some type of altercation occurred.
No arrests have been made, Folke said, and no other information was immediately available Tuesday evening.
Tuesday’s shooting marks the 50th homicide of the year, compared with 45 at the same date in 2023, according to a Star Tribune database.
The nation saw a historic 30% increase in homicides in 2020, which criminologists attribute to far-ranging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and fallout from the police murder of George Floyd.
