A 56-year-old St. Paul man has pleaded guilty to murdering his girlfriend at her downtown apartment in 2023 and will be given nearly 25 years in prison at his July sentencing.
Kelvin Maurice Perry pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder on Wednesday after reaching an agreement with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office in the killing of 39-year-old Shaqita Thomas at the Press House apartment building on Nov. 15, 2023. An autopsy determined she’d been asphyxiated.
Kelvin Maurice Perry (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Two minutes after Perry told a childhood friend, “My girlfriend is gone — she is dead,” he walked in front of a light-rail train and was struck in St. Paul, the criminal complaint says. He was charged with Thomas’ murder while hospitalized with serious injuries.
Perry entered a Norgaard plea, which means a defendant says they cannot remember what happened because of intoxication or amnesia but acknowledges there is enough evidence for a jury to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.
The plea agreement calls for a little over 24½ years in prison. He remains jailed ahead of his July 23 sentencing.
Paramedics found Thomas dead in her bedroom after a friend asked the apartment building’s property manager to do a wellness check. She was lying face down beneath a blow-up mattress in the bedroom, and had head trauma and small cuts on her body.
Shaqita Thomas (Courtesy of GoFundMe)
A friend of Thomas told investigators she had been on a FaceTime video call with her about 11:20 a.m. Nov. 15 and she was crying while a man yelled at her in the background. Thomas told her friend the man was mad at her for spending the night at the emergency room with her estranged husband because of her son’s asthma, the complaint says.
Thomas’ husband, from whom she was separated, said he dropped her off in front of the apartment building on Cedar Street between Fourth and Fifth streets between 10 and 10:30 a.m. Thomas wanted him to leave so there wouldn’t be an altercation between him and her boyfriend.
An investigator also spoke with a woman Perry had dated. She reported he is a “very violent, jealous person,” the complaint states. She said she’d talked to a relative of Perry’s, who said Perry called people he knew and told them he “choked” Thomas out.
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Surveillance video showed Perry left Thomas’ apartment about 12:50 p.m. and that her key fob wasn’t used to unlock the door again until it was opened for paramedics two days later.
A woman who’s known Perry since they were kids said he called her at 11:13 a.m. Nov. 17 and that he “was crying and panicking” and told her, “Something is going on,” the complaint says. He asked her to tell his sister he loved her and the call ended.
At 11:15 a.m., Perry walked in front of a Green Line train at University and Western avenues in St. Paul.
“Perry has a significant arrest history out of Chicago where he is from and has family,” according to the complaint.
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