An Oklahoma man has admitted to fatally shooting a Milwaukee man in St. Paul while the two were in town for a wedding and fought after a night of drinking in 2023.
Jason Moua, 44, entered a plea to second-degree intentional murder this week in Ramsey County District Court in the killing of 36-year-old Khoau Yang, who he shot in the chest in St. Paul’s Battle Creek neighborhood.
Moua faces between 23¾ and 26 years in prison at sentencing, which is scheduled for April 22.
Jason Moua (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Police were sent to the 2100 block of Scenic Place, which is southeast of Interstate 94 and McKnight Road, at 2:10 a.m. on Oct. 1, 2023, on a report of a gunshot and a man lying in the street. Officers found Yang facedown with no pulse.
A trail of blood near his body led to a white shirt and a cellphone that investigators later discovered belonged to Moua, the criminal complaint says.
In Yang’s pockets were a cellphone and a room key to the Double Tree by Hilton hotel, which is about one-third mile from where he was killed. A cellphone message referenced the Dog House Bar and Grill in Maplewood.
Surveillance video footage from the bar showed Yang, Moua and three others leaving in a SUV around 1:50 a.m. the morning of the killing.
Officers obtained a search warrant for Moua’s cellphone. In a text thread with his son, Moua said he was coming up for his niece’s wedding. The woman lived at a Jackson Street home in St. Paul.
Officers executed a search warrant at the home and recovered a box of ammunition matching casings and a round found at the homicide. Officers confirmed that Moua and a friend came up from Oklahoma and stayed at the home before the murder. Officers found a handgun in a car belonging to one of Moua’s relatives, the complaint says.
Investigators spoke to a Milwaukee man who said he drove to St. Paul with Yang and another man. He said the trio hung out with Moua and another man who traveled from Oklahoma. He said they went to a couple of bars and ended up at the Dog House Bar & Grill.
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After they left the bar and while on their way to the hotel, Moua and Yang fought in the SUV. The driver pulled over on Scenic Place and the group of men got out of the car. The fighting between the two men continued.
The other men tried to stop the fight, but Moua took out a gun and tried to pistol whip Yang in the face. Moua and Yang fell to the ground during the fight, and one shot was fired. Yang tried to stand up and Moua shot him, the complaint says.
Moua then pointed the gun at the other men and ordered them back into the SUV, threatening to kill them if they “snitched on him for shooting” Yang, the complaint says.
Moua was charged five days after the murder and was arrested in Delaware County, Okla.
The complaint says Moua has prior convictions for armed robbery, second-degree assault with a firearm and aiding an offender after the fact in a first-degree murder case.
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