A Mounds View man was sentenced Wednesday to just under a year in prison and five years of probation for shooting a 15-year-old girl in the foot during a fight in a St. Paul park last summer.
Arlanders Marshall, 25, pleaded guilty in September to second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm and ammunition by a person prohibited from doing so by a conviction for a violent crime.
The victim’s mother told police that the July 13 shooting at 11 a.m. in Roy Wilkins Park stemmed from the mother’s cooperation with prosecutors against Marshall’s girlfriend in a Washington County robbery case. The mother said Marshall’s girlfriend had recently gone to court on charges of theft and learned from police reports that the mother had spoken to police; the mother was also charged in the case.
She said the friend was upset and gave pepper spray to some of the girls, who used it on the mother’s children the night before. The mother and woman then had “words” on Snapchat.
The mother told police that she, along with her 15-year-old daughter and other family members, were at Roy Wilkins Park, formerly known as Lewis Park, on the city’s North End. While they were near their vehicle, she said, a car pulled up and Marshall and two women got out, yelling about the previous robbery.
The friend pulled her out of a car and hit her with a hardcover lighter, before pepper-spraying both her and her daughter.
She said she saw the friend hand a gun to Marshall, who shot them several times. The teen then screamed that she had been shot and the group drove away.
Officers found fourteen bullet casings at the scene and the teen’s family car had four bullet holes in the hood.
A search of Marshall’s apartment found ammunition with the same head stamp as the spent casings collected at the scene; The police found no weapon.
Location data from a cell phone connected to Marshall placed the phone in the area of the shooting.
Marshall’s girlfriend faced the same charges as him, but they were dismissed in August, with a spokesperson for the law firm explaining that prosecutors believed they could not prove the case against her based on the evidence.
In sentencing Marshall, Ramsey County District Judge DeAnne Hilgers allowed downward departures from state sentencing guidelines on both counts. She received a five-year sentence for the assault and a three-year sentence for the firearms charge.
The judge imposed a 360-day sentence on both charges and gave Marshall credit for the 128 days he had already spent in custody.
