A St. Paul man was sentenced to 22 years in prison Tuesday for shooting into a car his girlfriend was riding in and killing the 21-year-old man who was driving.
Martavious Roby-English, 21, pleaded guilty Feb. 13 to second-degree unintentional murder in the May 30 killing of Toumai Gaynor in the 800 block of Simcoe Street, off Atwater Street.
Martavious Roby-English (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Roby-English was originally charged with intentional murder. He entered the guilty plea after reaching an agreement with the prosecution that included the lesser murder charge and the length of the prison term handed down Tuesday. An attempted murder charge was dismissed, and he was given credit for 310 days already served in custody.
Just over a month before the murder, Roby-English was released from prison and into supervision after serving time for two shootings in St. Paul.
According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul officers responded to the May 30 shooting at 2:28 a.m. and found Gaynor, of St. Paul, slumped over in the driver’s seat of a Toyota Camry. He had gunshot wounds to his head, hip and arm, and died at Regions Hospital about 11:15 a.m.
Officers found five 9mm shell casings around the Camry and a .45-caliber Glock firearm with blood on it and an extended magazine inserted in it directly behind the car. A spent casing was on the Camry’s dashboard.
An 18-year-old woman told police that Gaynor was her friend and he was driving her Camry. They’d gone to Simcoe Street to see if he could stay with friends and, when he couldn’t, he asked her to take him to another location. They sat in the car and talked. Then, as he was trying to make a U-turn, a man ran up to the car and started shooting.
The woman told police she ducked down in shock and told Gaynor to drive, but he didn’t move. The shooter pulled the woman from the Camry and she realized it was Roby-English. He told her he acted in self-defense because Gaynor fired first, the complaint says. She ran and called 911.
She told police she had thrown Gaynor’s gun behind the car because she thought he “was going to live and she didn’t want him to get in trouble for having a gun,” the complaint says. “The gun was hot when she touched it, so she realized it had been fired.”
She said she’d been in a relationship with Roby-English for three years and they continued to communicate while he was incarcerated.
A search of the woman’s cellphone revealed Roby-English had sent her several texts right before the shooting, the complaint says. At 1:41 a.m., he wrote, “Don’t make me walk ova there and shoot that (expletive) up.”
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