A former St. Paul gas station employee was sentenced to three years in prison Monday for shooting and wounding two men during a fight outside the business in 2024.
Antonio Allen Ellis (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)
Antonio Allen Ellis, 23, of West St. Paul, pleaded guilty to second-degree assault in January in connection with the shooting at the Arco Station on Larpenteur Avenue off Interstate 35E about 7 a.m. Dec. 29, 2024. A second count was dismissed at sentencing.
Ramsey County District Judge DeAnne Hilgers denied a request to give Ellis probation, saying several factors of the case did not warrant departing from state sentencing guidelines.
Ellis did not have to go outside with the men, who “instigated something” and were unarmed, Hilgers said. “That was a decision point,” she said. “That may have been the decision point of the night.”
Ellis was on felony probation that prohibited him from possessing a firearm, Hilgers noted.
“And the fact that 14 rounds were fired and you were the only one who had a firearm, does not make this less serious,” she said. “Perhaps more serious.”
The victims retreated
Officers who responded to the shooting found a 34-year-old man by the gas pumps who had been shot in the lower back. A 33-year-old man, who was shot in the knee, was in a sport-utility vehicle nearby at Wheelock Parkway and Mississippi Street.
Police were told the shooter was Ellis.
Ellis’ co-worker said the man shot in the knee entered the store “and was under the influence of something,” according to the criminal complaint against Ellis. “He made statements indicating that everything in the store was ‘free’ for him.”
The co-worker said Ellis has a “short fuse” and started arguing with the man, the complaint continued. Surveillance video from the store showed Ellis taking items from the man and returning them to shelves. The man got very close to Ellis, who pushed him away.
The man told Ellis they should go outside and settle the matter, according to the co-worker. Surveillance video outside the store showed the man was in Ellis’ face, and Ellis began to pull a handgun out of his pocket as the man pulled his arm back to swing a fist toward him. They started to fight.
The other man, who was later shot in the back, jumped out of the white SUV and entered “the fray,” the complaint said. Ellis fell to the ground, the man who exited the SUV appeared to throw a punch at Ellis, and Ellis displayed his gun.
Both men retreated, and Ellis fired toward them and continued firing as they retreated, the complaint said.
Ellis ran away. Officers located 14 casings in front of the store. Police didn’t find a firearm on either of the wounded men.
Ellis later turned himself in to St. Paul police and did not speak with investigators. He did not have a permit to carry a firearm.
Others ‘could have been shot’
Ellis’ attorney, Ira Whitlock, in arguing for probation, said one of the men shot had threatened Ellis’ co-worker. Ellis, once outside the store, was “beaten, kicked and stomped and punched,” but managed to grab his gun while on the ground, according to Whitlock.
“This was a man who got attacked and defended himself, but lost that right to self-defense because he escalated it to a point of bringing a dangerous weapon to the fight,” Whitlock said.
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Nevertheless, he said, Ellis was at work and “not going out on the street trying to be a gangster.”
The prosecution asked for a 39-month prison sentence, with Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Cory Tennison noting how Ellis was on probation at the time and that the shooting was at a business in a residential neighborhood.
“Multiple people just going about their business at 7 a.m. could have been shot as well,” Tennison said.
Hilgers said she recognized how the victims “were not innocent in this matter” and also that Ellis had supporters in the courtroom gallery, including his fiancee and their young child.
“But given the circumstances, I cannot find a departure here,” the judge said.
