Before a 24-year-old was shot in the head in St. Paul, he was walking with his cousins — they were being followed by two men, but were unaware they were being “hunted,” according to murder charges filed this week.

Dejaun Hemphill, 24, was left unconscious and not breathing after the Nov. 5 shooting and died at the hospital on Nov. 15.

On Thursday, the St. Paul police SWAT team arrested Kenneth E. Terry, 18, and Jehovah M. Nelson, 19, both of St. Paul. Murder charges against them were unsealed.

Kenneth E. Terry (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Hemphill was with two cousins when he was shot near University Avenue and Rice Street. A woman who was previously in a relationship with Terry reported that she had been hanging out with one of Hemphill’s cousins’ younger brothers, which was making Terry jealous. She said Terry had been bragging about Hemphill’s murder on social media, according to a criminal complaint.

Officers on patrol heard three to four shots fired about 4:55 p.m. on Nov. 5. They saw a man running and police found him. He said he and his cousins — Hemphill and another man — went to a convenience/tobacco store on University Avenue at Arundel Street. They were walking east on University Avenue for one of them to get cash from an ATM off Rice Street when someone shot at them from behind, which led him run.

Hemphill’s other cousin flagged down officers, and said his cousin had been shot and needed medical attention. He said he didn’t see who the shooter was.

Hemphill was lying on the University Avenue sidewalk between Marion and Rice streets, and was taken by ambulance to Regions Hospital. A surgeon told police that Hemphill’s “case was one of the worst she had worked on,” the complaint said.

Hemphill fought for his life, according to a GoFundMe for funeral expenses. He was the father of a 4-month-old son, “who will now experience life without him,” the fundraiser said.

Surveillance video showed shooting

Police found surveillance video from the day before the shooting that showed a man, who investigators identified as Nelson, at University Avenue and Lexington Parkway. In video from Nov. 5 less than an hour before the shooting, in the area where Hemphill was shot, police saw a man wearing the same clothes as Nelson but this time with a white mask that completely covered his face, the complaint said.

Jehovah M. Nelson (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

Police identified Terry from surveillance video that showed him outside the convenience store about 4 p.m. on Nov. 5. Hemphill and his cousins went in the store about 4:40 p.m. Terry was inside the store and looked out the window several times when they left, video showed.

In additional video, the shooter and Terry were seen running through a parking lot behind the cousins at 4:54 p.m. The shooter took up a firing stance and Hemphill fell to the sidewalk.

On Nov. 8, a man saw someone breaking into his sister’s vehicle in Minneapolis on Minnehaha Avenue between 35th and 36th streets. The man ran out to confront the thief. A GMC Terrain pulled up and a backseat passenger shot at the man. The man returned fire and the Terrain left. The thief ran away.

Less than 20 minutes later, the Terrain arrived at a hospital and dropped off a man with a gunshot wound that grazed his head. The wounded man was identified as Terry.

Police searched the Terrain and, in a backpack, found Nelson’s school identification. Also in the vehicle was a white Michael Myers mask — the killer character in the “Halloween” movies who wears a mask — that matched the mask worn by the shooter in St. Paul, the complaint said.

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Investigators obtained search warrants for two cellphones found in the backpack, along for Terry’s Snapchat account. A Snapchat video from Nov. 1 showed Terry reach off camera and get a white Michael Myers mask.

Photos and surveillance video showed Nelson “wearing the exact same Nike sweatshirt, Nike sweatpants and black shoes with red laces worn by the man who killed” Hemphill, the complaint said.

The Ramsey County Attorney’s Office charged both men with aiding and abetting murder, along with attempted murder of Hemphill’s cousin who ran after they were shot at. They are due to make their first court appearance Friday.

By FABIOLA SÁNCHEZ and JOSHUA GOODMAN

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico has sent 29 drug cartel figures, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. DEA agent in 1985, to the United States as the Trump administration turns up the pressure on drug trafficking organizations.

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The unprecedented show of security cooperation comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington trying to head off the Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday.

Those sent to the U.S. Thursday were brought from prisons across Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico City that took them to eight U.S. cities, according to the Mexican government.

Among them were members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

Besides Caro Quintero were cartel leaders, security chiefs from both factions of the Sinaloa cartel, cartel finance operatives and a man wanted in connection with the killing of a North Carolina sheriff’s deputy in 2022.

FILE – Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, the purported leader of the Juarez cartel, is led to a helicopter after his arrest at the hangar of the Mexican Attorney Generals Office in Mexico City, Oct. 9, 2014. (AP Photo, File)

Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as “The Lord of The Skies,” who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997, was among those turned over to the U.S.

According to prosecutors in both countries, the prisoners sent to the U.S. Thursday faced charges related to drug trafficking and in some cases homicide among other crimes.

“We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement.

The removal of the drug cartel figures coincided with a visit to Washington by Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary Juan Ramón de la Fuente and other top economic and military officials, who met with their counterparts, including U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

In exchange for delaying tariffs, Trump had insisted that Mexico crack down on cartels, illegal immigration and fentanyl production, despite significant dips in migration and overdoses over the past year.

“This is historical, this has really never happened in the history of Mexico,” said Mike Vigil, former DEA chief of international operations. “This is a huge celebratory thing for the Drug Enforcement Administration.”

Mexico’s surprise handover of one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives was weeks in the making.

Caro Quintero had walked free in 2013 after 28 years in prison when a court overturned his 40-year sentence for the 1985 kidnapping and killing of U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. The brutal murder marked a low point in U.S.-Mexico relations.

Caro Quintero, the former leader of the Guadalajara cartel, had since returned to drug trafficking and unleashed bloody turf battles in the northern Mexico border state of Sonora until he was arrested by Mexican forces in 2022.

In January, a nonprofit group representing the Camarena family sent a letter to the White House urging the Trump administration to renew longstanding U.S. requests for Mexico to extradite Caro Quintero, according to a copy of the letter provided to The Associated Press by a person familiar with the family’s outreach.

“His return to the U.S. would give the family much needed closure and serve the best interests of justice,” the letter states.

Pressure increased after Trump threatened imposing stiff trade tariffs on Mexico and designated several Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, according to a person on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive diplomacy that went into Caro Quintero’s removal.

The acting head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Derek Maltz, provided the White House with a list of nearly 30 Mexican targets wanted in the U.S. on criminal charges, according to the person. Caro Quintero, for whose arrest the U.S. had offered a $20 million reward, was number one on that list, according to the person.

“This moment is extremely personal for the men and women of DEA who believe Caro Quintero is responsible for the brutal torture and murder of DEA Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena,” Maltz said Thursday.

The person said President Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, in a rush to seek favor with the Trump administration and show itself a strong ally in the fight against the cartels, bypassed the formalities of the U.S.-Mexico extradition treaty to remove Caro Quintero and the other defendants.

That means it could potentially allow prosecutors in the U.S. to try him for Camarena’s murder — something not contemplated in the existing extradition request to face separate drug trafficking charges in a Brooklyn federal court.

“If he’s being sent to the U.S. outside of a formal extradition, and if Mexico didn’t place any restrictions, then he can be prosecuted for whatever the U.S. wants,” according to Bonnie Klapper, a former federal narcotics prosecutor in Brooklyn who is familiar with the case.

The U.S. had sought the extradition of Caro Quintero shortly after his arrest in 2022. But the request remained stuck at Mexico’s foreign ministry for unknown reasons as Sheinbaum’s predecessor and political mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, severely curtailed Mexican cooperation with DEA to protest undercover U.S. law enforcement operations in Mexico targeting senior political and military officials.

Also among those removed were two leaders of the now defunct Los Zetas cartel, Mexicans Miguel Treviño Morales and his brother Omar Treviño Morales, known as Z-40 and Z-42. The brothers have been accused by American authorities of running the successor Northeast Cartel from prison.

FILE – Soldiers escort a man who authorities identified as Omar Trevino Morales, alias “Z-42,” leader of the Zetas drug cartel, as he is moved from a military plane to a military vehicle at the Attorney General’s Office hangar in Mexico City, March 4, 2015. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo, File)

The removal of the Treviño Morales brothers marks the end of a long process that began after the capture in 2013 of Miguel and two years later of his brother, Omar. Mexico’s Attorney General Alejandro Gertz Manero had described the delay as “truly shameful.”

Mexican security analyst David Saucedo said that since negotiations with the Trump administration began, he had expected the U.S. government to demand three things: an increase in drug seizures, arrests of high-profile drug trafficking suspects and the handing over of drug traffickers long targeted by the U.S. for extradition.

He called Thursday’s removals “an important concession” by Mexico’s government to the United States.

The decision also threatens to upend an unwritten understanding — with notable exceptions — that Mexican drug lords would serve sentences in Mexican prisons where they were often able continue to run their illicit businesses, Saucedo said.

“There will surely be a furious reaction by drug trafficking groups against the Mexican state,” he said.

Goodman reported from Miami. Megan Janetsky contributed to this report from Mexico City.

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

By JANIE HAR

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday found that the mass firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful, granting some temporary relief to a coalition of labor unions and organizations that has sued to stop the Trump administration’s massive trimming of the federal workforce.

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U.S. District Judge William Alsup ordered the Office of Personnel Management to inform certain federal agencies that it had no authority to order the firings of probationary employees, including the Department of Defense.

“OPM does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute in the history of the universe,” to hire or fire any employees but its own, he said.

Alsup handed down the order on a temporary restraining order sought by labor unions and nonprofits in a lawsuit filed by the coalition filed last week.

The complaint filed by five labor unions and five nonprofit organizations is among multiple lawsuits pushing back on the administration’s efforts to vastly shrink the federal workforce, which Trump has called bloated and sloppy. Thousands of probationary employees have already been fired and his administration is now aiming at career officials with civil service protection.

The plaintiffs say the Office of Personnel Management had no authority to terminate the jobs of probationary workers who generally have less than a year on the job. They also say the firings were predicated on a lie of poor performance by the workers.

Lawyers for the government say the Office of Personnel Management did not direct the firings, but asked agencies to review and determine whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment. They also say that probationary employees are not guaranteed employment and that only the highest performing and mission-critical employees should be hired.

There are an estimated 200,000 probationary workers — generally employees who have less than a year on the job — across federal agencies. About 15,000 are employed in California, providing services ranging from fire prevention to veterans’ care, the complaint says.

Unions have recently struck out with two other federal judges in similar lawsuits attempting to stop the Trump administration’s goal of vastly reducing the federal workforce.

Alsup, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has presided over many high-profile cases and is known for his blunt talk. He oversaw the criminal probation of Pacific Gas & Electric and has called the nation’s largest utility a “ continuing menace to California.”

When a 3-month-old boy was seen at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis for seizures, a CT scan and more evaluation uncovered numerous injuries, including bleeding on the brain and more than 46 fractures, some of which were healing, throughout his body.

The infant’s twin brother was then evaluated, showing bruises to his forearms and abdomen, 14 fractures and burst blood vessels to both eyes consistent with abusive trauma, according to a criminal complaint filed Thursday against the boys’ father, Dylan Raymond Strain, 20, of St. Paul.

The brain injuries to the one infant will likely result in permanent disability, including vision loss, the complaint says, adding they “caused significant risk of death.” His brother is at risk of developmental delays and impaired vision.

St. Paul police began an investigation after receiving a report from child protection services after the more seriously injured baby was seen at the hospital Jan. 31.

Police learned the infants were born prematurely on Oct. 2. One boy arrived home in St. Paul on Dec. 11, and his twin went home 23 days later. They lived with their mother, Strain, their maternal grandmother and her two children, ages 7 and 9.

According to the complaint, investigators on Feb. 4 spoke with the grandmother who said, “My grandbabies are in the hospital because some man don’t know how to control himself. She added, “That man is Dylan Strain.”

She said that shortly after the second baby came home from the hospital, she saw Strain screaming at both infants. She reported that she found “a punch mark in the wall” of the babies’ room and heard hysterical crying from the room more than once. When she saw a cut on a lip on one of the infants, Strain told her he jabbed a bottle or pacifier too hard into the baby’s mouth.

She said that on Jan. 30, one of the babies was screaming while on Strain’s lap. He was holding a baby wipe to his son’s mouth, and a pile of bloody wipes were on the floor. He told her he did not know what happened and said he is a “bad dad,” and “I can’t handle this,” the complaint states. He handed the baby to her and stormed out of the room.

She told medical providers that she would see bruising on the babies after Strain had been with them.

The children’s 20-year-old mother spoke with investigators on Feb. 5, telling them her babies were healthy when they came home from the hospital. She said that Strain forced a bottle on the babies and that their mouths would bleed when he fed them, and that he would get frustrated with them during feeding times. She witnessed Strain wiping up blood with baby wipes.

She told investigators the broken bones were probably from Strain squeezing the babies too hard. She said that Strain would hold the babies on his lap and would yell and “bounce” the babies on his lap “very fast.” She agreed with investigators that the babies’ arms and legs would flail around during these incidents, and said she immediately grabbed the babies from him when she saw that.

She tried to take responsibility for the broken collarbone and broken legs. She said one baby’s collarbone probably broke when she was holding him down to receive a vaccine at the doctor’s office and that she thought she caused one of the leg breaks when she was “bicycling” his legs, which she called “tummy exercises.”

Investigators interviewed Strain the same day, and he said he was likely the cause of the injuries to his twins, according to the complaint. He said he would panic when both babies cried. He said, “I was a bit lackluster with my patience with the kids.”

Strain said the babies’ mother did not harm the children, adding he knows that for “a fact,” the complaint states.

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Strain described an incident where he said he may have put too much pressure on one baby’s ribs during a diaper change. He said he thought he injured a baby’s collarbone while holding him face down on his legs. He agreed that he might squeeze the twins too tight, but said he hadn’t shaken them.

Strain acknowledged that he needed therapy to deal with crying babies. He said, “Baby crying gets me so worked up,” the complaint states. He said he has always had anger issues, but did not see his anger coming.

Strain was charged by warrant in Ramsey County District Court with two counts of felony first-degree assault causing great bodily harm and two counts of malicious punishment of a child. He had not been arrested as of Thursday afternoon.

Minnesota court records show no previous convictions for Strain.