A 38-year-old man who opened fire on three Target employees outside a St. Paul store, causing them to run for cover, has been acquitted of charges by reason of mental illness.
Fa Lee faced six counts of attempted murder for the September 2022 shooting at the Suburban Avenue store, off Interstate 94. The three men weren’t struck by the gunfire, but they were “visibly shaken and scared,” the criminal complaint said.
Lee asserted a defense of mental illness and a court trial was held before Ramsey County District Judge Adam Yang on Feb. 21. Yang issued his written ruling this week.
After police arrested Lee outside his St. Paul home, he spoke to investigators and said he went to Target and shot somebody. Lee said he went to the store because his girlfriend works there and she was stabbed.
When police talked to the woman who Lee said he was in a relationship with, she told officers she did not know Lee and she had not been stabbed. She was vacationing in Chicago at the time.
Lee also told police that he’d been hearing voices and hadn’t told anyone. Family members said they had not noticed Lee acting strangely.
Criminal proceedings were put on hold two months later after Lee was found to be incompetent to stand trial. He was civilly committed as mentally ill and chemically dependent and received treatment at inpatient facilities. A year ago, after another evaluation, Lee was found to be competent to face the charges.
In March, Lee transitioned from an intensive residential treatment facility to his sister’s home, with a referral to continued mental health and substance use disorder programming, according to Yang’s ruling.
‘Ran and never looked back’
Officers were called to Target on a report of “an active shooter outside the store” at 1:50 p.m. Sept. 2, 2022, the complaint said. The shooter was gone when police arrived.
Three male employees, who were each 26 years, said they were by a shopping cart return rack on the side of the store. One of the men had been gathering carts when someone in an SUV pulled into the lot directly across from them and shot at them.
“They ran and never looked back,” the complaint said. One climbed over a nearby fence to escape. Another man hid under a deck in the area.
Officers found a dozen spent 9 mm casings.
Surveillance video showed the suspect vehicle; officers found it about a half-mile from Target, parked near its registered address in the 300 block of Van Dyke Street. Lee came out of the residence and said, “Y’all came for me,” according to the complaint.
Lee, who had a loaded handgun in his waistband, had a permit to carry a firearm in Ramsey County.
He reported that he was on the couch when his wife, whom he later described as his girlfriend, was stabbed in the chest and he “felt the pain in his chest — he felt like his heart was bleeding,” the complaint continued.
He said he grabbed his handgun and went to Target, where he saw three men outside. “His wife’s voice in his head told Lee the guy in the gray shirt was the person who stabbed her,” the complaint said of what Lee told police.
He said he began shooting while seated in his SUV. He got out and continued to fire the gun, then walked back to his SUV and drove away.
He said he hadn’t been diagnosed with any conditions and didn’t take medication.
Officers recovered a rifle and three handgun magazines from his home.
‘Lacked ability to control himself’
In Minnesota, a person is not criminally liable for an act when, at the time of committing the act, the person did not know the nature of the act, or did not know that it was wrong, because of a defect of reason caused by a mental illness and/or cognitive impairment.
The evidence shows that Lee did not understand that his act was wrong, Judge Yang wrote in his verdict, adding that Lee was “motivated by auditory hallucinations and paranoid beliefs.”
Lee shot at the three men “because his wife’s voice in his head told him that the guy in the gray shirt was the one who stabbed her,” Yang wrote. “He does not have a wife and the person he identified as his wife who had been stabbed did not know him.”
Based on Lee’s report of acting on command of auditory hallucinations, Yang concluded, he “lacked the ability to control himself. He operated under the assumption he was married, and his wife’s life was in danger. He was not able to engage in reality testing to stop himself from acting. This was a direct result of his mental illness and/or cognitive impairment.”
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