Charges filed in the fatal shooting of a St. Paul man on Monday night allege both he and the gunman fired several rounds during a marijuana deal that went awry.
Eithan Armani Green, 29, of Minneapolis, was charged Friday by warrant in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree murder and possession of a firearm by an ineligible person in connection with the killing of David Lee Turner III, 23, in the West Seventh neighborhood of St. Paul.
Green was dropped off by a man at Regions Hospital shortly after the shooting with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and leg, the criminal complaint said. He remained hospitalized Friday in serious but stable condition.
A case against another man is under review for possible charges, a spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office said Friday.
According to the complaint, police found Turner shot and slumped over in the driver’s seat of a Dodge Durango in the 100 block of Oneida Street just after 10 p.m. He had no pulse and wasn’t breathing, and was pronounced dead at the scene. An autopsy showed eight gunshot wounds, including to his face, neck and chest.
Officers processed the Durango and recovered eight spent 9mm casings, three spent .40-caliber casings and nearly three pounds of marijuana.
Video surveillance from a nearby home showed the Durango and a Ford Escape pulled up on Oneida Street, between Superior and Michigan streets, at separate times.
A man, later identified as Green, got out of the Escape and into the Durango’s front passenger seat, the complaint said. Shots rang out a short time later, with windows on both sides of the Durango shattering.
A man wearing a dark-colored jacket ran from the Escape’s back passenger seat to the Durango and began rummaging through it. Green got out, “hopped around” and ran back to Escape’s front passenger seat. A driver of the SUV then drove away with Green, leaving the other man behind.
‘I shot him’
Officers were sent to Regions Hospital shortly after the shooting on a report of a man who’d been dropped off with gunshot wounds to his abdomen and leg. He didn’t have a wallet or a cellphone, but police identified him as Green.
Investigators found a phone number for Green, and records showed the phone was in the area at the time of Turner’s killing, then near Regions and Minneapolis, the complaint said.
Investigators discovered that Green’s phone was “pinging” in the area of the Minneapolis Police Department’s Fourth Precinct on the city’s North Side. They learned a man was arrested Tuesday in Minneapolis after driving Green’s car, where officers found a .380-caliber handgun and two cellphones. The man said one of the phones belonged to a friend.
In an interview, the man told investigators that he and Green had previously bought marijuana from Turner, and that both he and Green had used his phone to text Turner about buying marijuana from him, the complaint said.
The man said he drove the Escape, which belonged to Green’s girlfriend, to the meet-up spot the night of the shooting. He gave Green $350 to buy the drug, and Green got out and into the Durango. He then heard two different guns fire. Green ran back to the Escape and said, “I shot him,” the man told police, according to the complaint.
“(The man) asked what Green did to make (Turner) shoot him, but Green just asked (the man) to take him to the hospital,” the complaint read.
The man said he drove Green to Regions in the Escape and that Green left a Taurus 9mm handgun and his phone in the SUV before walking into the hospital. Officers later recovered the gun at an apartment belonging to the man’s girlfriend, the complaint said.
Green denied knowing Turner
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In an interview with investigators, Green said he was drunk and high and couldn’t recall how he was shot and where, the complaint said.
He denied shooting anyone and said he didn’t own a gun. He denied knowing Turner.
According to the complaint, when investigators told him the shooting was on video, he said, “I’m shot” and “Who shot me?”
Court records show Green has several felony convictions, all out of St. Louis County, including for first-degree robbery and fifth-degree drug possession in 2014; felony domestic assault in 2017; and aiding and abetting first-degree robbery in 2019.
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