Teen couple’s crime spree underscores the need for more juvenile detention facilities
News broke recently about a shooting in Minneapolis from this past fall being solved, and the suspects arrested.
The good news is that Minneapolis police investigators were able to piece together a complex case involving several juvenile suspects, and the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office had decided to charge the shooter as an adult. The bad news is the two defendants, Randall Bernard Williams (16) of Woodbury and a 15-year-old female from Fridley who remains unnamed due to her juvenile status, had committed a previous violent crime from October and should have never been free to almost kill a man in December.
According to reporting, a 24-year-old man met the female who went by the name “Sasha” on a dating app in November. On December 5, Sasha lured the man to Minneapolis, where he picked her up with two other females and two males, including Williams who went by “T-Moe.” Sasha and T-Moe directed the man to drive into an alley in the 3900 block of 11th Ave So, supposedly to visit Sasha’s grandmother. They convinced him to exit his car and leave his cell phone behind. Once in the alley, T-Moe fired at least five shots severely injuring the man, before leaving him for dead and fleeing in his car.
Upon investigation, police were able to connect Sasha and T-Moe as two defendants in a violent home invasion burglary in Loring Park from October. In that case, they had forcibly entered an apartment while armed and masked, demanding the safe they believed was in the apartment.
Evidence from Shasha’s phone showed photos of her posing with the gun T-Moe used to shoot the man in December, and messages from her stating that females “can be killers too.”
Reporting indicates Sasha and T-Moe were arrested in Red Wing in late January, and that the charges from the December shooting and carjacking were filed last Friday.
The series of incidents are disturbing due to the level of violence being carried out by juveniles, many now as young as 11. They also demonstrate how important it is for policymakers in Minnesota to reverse the poor decisions to gut our juvenile justice system of secure holding facilities in recent years. Treating violent juvenile offenders like silly kids who just “messed up” is failing them and failing to provide for the public safety that law-abiding Minnesotans deserve.