Gunman pleads guilty to 2019 killing outside St. Paul bar

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

A St. Paul man admitted Wednesday to fatally shooting a man outside a University Avenue bar nearly five years ago.

Devante Lattrele Jennings, 29, was charged last year with two counts of second-degree murder in the May 2019 death of 33-year-old Michael Gray of St. Paul at the now-closed Johnny Baby’s at University Avenue and Chatsworth Street.

Jennings, whose first name is also spelled Devonte in court records, was charged while incarcerated on a 2021 firearms conviction out of Ramsey County. He was released from custody this past December and booked into the Ramsey County Jail, where he has remained in lieu of $1 million bail.

Jennings’ case was scheduled to go before a jury in July. He struck a deal with the prosecution Wednesday and pleaded guilty to second-degree unintentional murder while committing a felony. In exchange for the plea, a second-degree intentional murder charge will be dismissed at sentencing, which is scheduled for July 17.

The plea document says that Jennings faces between just shy of 13 years and up to 15 years in prison under state guidelines.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police responded to reports of a shooting outside Johnny Baby’s about 2 a.m. on May 4, 2019, where they found Gray lying in the parking lot with a gunshot wound to his head. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Investigators learned a Kia sedan with Wisconsin license plates was at the scene when the shooting occurred and traced it to a man identified in court documents by the initials TC, who knew the car’s owner. They also found a cigarette butt in the vehicle with Jennings’ DNA on it, the complaint says.

Jennings initially told investigators he had bought drugs from TC months earlier and smoked a cigarette in the front seat, but he denied being at Johnny Baby’s at the time of the shooting and told police he was at his brother’s house that night.

Surveillance footage captured outside Johnny Baby’s the night of the shooting shows Jennings, TC and a third man arriving at the bar in the Kia sedan about 1:30 a.m. The third man, identified in court documents as WB, got out of the car and walked into the bar, bumping into Gray on his way inside, the complaint says.

WB walked back out to the parking lot about 1:42 a.m. and remained there with Jennings and TC until about 2 a.m., when the three men got back into the vehicle.

The video shows that Gray approached the Kia and appeared to speak with Jennings, who was in the front passenger seat, before backing away and walking toward the back of the car. Jennings then leaned out of the front passenger window and shot Gray, the complaint says.

WB was killed in September 2019 near the St. Paul Saloon by friends of Gray, the complaint says.

In March 2023, while interviewing Jennings at the Moose Lake prison, investigators showed him still frames from Johnny Baby’s surveillance footage. They told Jennings they had identified him as the person in the footage.

“Jennings looked at the photos and sighed,” the complaint says. “Jennings did not deny he was the person in the photos. Jennings then said he would wait to talk to the investigator at the Ramsey County jail with an attorney.”

Johnny Baby’s, which had been the site of several shootings in recent years, closed in March 2020 and was renovated into a retail establishment.

In addition to the 2021 firearms offense, Jennings has three other convictions, all of which are misdemeanors: violating a harassment restraining order in 2021; aiding and abetting third-degree assault in 2016; and domestic assault in 2013.

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