An Inver Grove Heights mother has avoided jail time in a child endangerment case in which her 3-year-old son shot his 7-year-old brother with her gun.
A January plea agreement that Kamera Karmeasha Wright Ramsey, 32, reached with Dakota County prosecutors called for no additional jail time beyond the five days she had already served after her arrest for the August 2023 shooting. The plea deal also allowed her attorney to argue the duration of probation at sentencing.
Kamera Karmeasha Wright Ramsey (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)
On Wednesday, Dakota County District Judge Krista Marks put Wright Ramsey on probation for one day. A gross misdemeanor child endangerment charge was dismissed.
Court documents say the 3-year-old got hold of a Glock 45 9mm handgun while he and his brother were alone in their mother’s car. While handling the firearm, it was discharged and at least two bullets hit the 7-year-old in his hand and leg, causing serious injuries requiring surgery.
Wright Ramsey was the registered owner of the gun and had a permit to carry a gun, according to court documents.
However, her boyfriend, Derrick Wayne Burkhalter Jr., who was also charged in the case, later said at his plea hearing that he brought the gun with him into the car.
According to the criminal complaints:
Officers responded to a St. Paul hospital on Aug. 16, 2023, on a report of a child who’d been shot.
Wright Ramsey gave officials varying accounts of what happened.
She initially told Inver Grove Heights police that her son was playing with other children at Salem Hills Park in Inver Grove Heights when she heard a boom and saw her son was shot. Police went to the park and didn’t find evidence of a shooting, and confronted her about that.
She then said she’d been in a minor car crash outside her apartment in the 5300 block of Audobon Avenue. While she was outside her Chevrolet Cruze, she said her 3-year-old son got unbuckled, got her handgun from the trunk of the car and shot his 7-year-old brother. She believed he accessed the trunk from inside the car.
Officers talked to an apartment resident who said Wright Ramsey’s car struck hers on Aug. 15. Wright Ramsey and a man, later identified as Burkhalter, exited the car and exchanged information. As the couple began to sit back down in the car, the resident heard a loud bang followed by a child screaming in pain and she heard Wright Ramsey yell at a child.
County child protection workers interviewed the 7-year-old, who said he was on his tablet in the backseat of the car when his 3-year-old brother grabbed a gun and shot him. He said his mom was in the car at the time. “When asked if his mother told him what to say, he stopped answering questions,” according to the criminal complaint.
Derrick Wayne Burkhalter Jr. (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)
Child protection staff also talked to Wright Ramsey, who said she hadn’t been truthful with police because Burkhalter was with her in violation of a domestic abuse no-contact order. She said she’d left the children in the car with the firearm in her purse and, after the shooting, put the gun in a storage unit before going to the hospital. She said Burkhalter drove them.
Both children told police that the 7-year-old was shot with “daddy’s gun.” Burkhalter is the younger boy’s dad and the older boy refers to him as his father. The 3-year-old said his foot was burned after firing the gun, which was likely from a casing, court documents say.
Burkhalter, 30, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty to one count of felony child endangerment and one count of misdemeanor violating a domestic abuse no-contact order. At his December 2023 plea hearing, he asserted that he was the one who brought the loaded firearm into the car the day the boy was shot.
Burkhalter received a stayed 1½-year prison sentence and three years of probation in March 2024. He had served 89 days in jail.
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