19-year-old man enters guilty plea in fatal Mall of America shooting
One of the suspects in the fatal shooting inside the Mall of America the day before Christmas Eve in 2022 has pleaded guilty and is looking at a prison sentence of roughly 21 to 30 years.
TaeShawn Adams-Wright, 19, will be sentenced May 30 and prosecutors are requesting that Judge Paul Scoggins impose the maximum sentence for his role in the killing of 19-year-old Johntae Hudson inside the Nordstrom department store at the mall. Scoggins accepted Adams-Wright's plea Thursday.
The Hennepin County Attorney's Office charged him and Lavon Longstreet, 19, with aiding and abetting intentional second-degree murder.
Shortly before 8 p.m. on Dec. 23, 2022, surveillance video showed the suspects chasing Hudson, of St. Paul, through the store before they stood over him and fired multiple shots. Hudson was shot eight times. He died at the scene and police recovered his firearm that authorities say he fired twice.
Meanwhile, holiday shoppers and employees took cover. A bullet grazed one woman.
At the time of the shooting, Longstreet was 17 years old and six weeks away from turning 18.
Parties argued whether his case should proceed in juvenile. But County Attorney Mary Moriarty filed an official motion soon after taking office to have him certified as an adult because he "played a lead role in a brazen shooting that left one person dead and endangered the lives of many others at the Mall of America."
Longstreet fled the state after the shooting and Bloomington police issued a warrant. Authorities arrested him in Georgia with his mother three weeks after the shooting.
His trial is slated for April 15. Messages left with his public defender were not immediately returned.
