Today is Thursday, Aug. 15, the 228th day of 2024. There are 138 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Aug. 15, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair opened in upstate New York; more than 460,000 people attended the three-day festival, which would become a watershed event in American music and culture.

Also on this date:

In 1057, Macbeth, King of Scots, was killed in battle by Malcolm, the eldest son of King Duncan, whom Macbeth had slain.

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In 1914, the Panama Canal officially opened as the SS Ancon crossed the just-completed waterway between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans.

In 1935, humorist Will Rogers and aviator Wiley Post were killed when their airplane crashed near Point Barrow in the Alaska Territory.

In 1947, India gained independence after nearly 200 years of British rule.

In 1961, as workers began constructing a Berlin Wall made of concrete, East German soldier Conrad Schumann leapt to freedom over a tangle of barbed wire.

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk was sworn in as acting president of South Africa, one day after P.W. Botha resigned as the result of a power struggle within the National Party.

In 1998, 29 people were killed by a car bomb that tore apart the center of Omagh (OH’-mah), Northern Ireland; a splinter group calling itself the Real IRA claimed responsibility.

In 2003, bouncing back from the largest blackout in U.S. history, cities from the Midwest to Manhattan restored power to tens of millions of people.

In 2017, President Donald Trump, who’d faced harsh criticism for initially blaming deadly violence in Charlottesville, Virginia on “many sides,” told reporters that there were “very fine people on both sides” of the confrontation and that groups protesting against the white supremacists were “also very violent.” (In between those statements, at the urging of aides, Trump had offered a more direct condemnation of white supremacists.)

In 2021, the Taliban regained control of the Afghan capital of Kabul after the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country.

Today’s Birthdays:

Actor Jim Dale is 89.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is 86.
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., is 86.
Author-journalist Linda Ellerbee is 80.
Songwriter Jimmy Webb is 78.
Actor Phyllis Smith is 75.
Britain’s Princess Anne is 74.
Actor Tess Harper is 74.
Actor Zeljko Ivanek (ZEHL’-koh eh-VAHN’-ehk) is 67.
Celebrity chef Tom Colicchio is 62.
Film director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu (ihn-YAH’-ee-tu) is 61.
Philanthropist Melinda French Gates is 60.
Actor Debra Messing is 56.
Actor Anthony Anderson is 54.
Actor Ben Affleck is 52.
Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Kerri Walsh Jennings is 46.
Rock singer Joe Jonas (The Jonas Brothers) is 35.
Actor Jennifer Lawrence is 34.

A St. Paul teen has been sentenced to 12½ years in prison for a deadly shooting during a marijuana deal in the city’s Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood.

Deshawn Houston, who turned 18 in June, shot 23-year-old Devon A. Johnson while trying to rob Johnson’s friend during the March 14 drug deal. Johnson, a father of six young children, died of a gunshot wound to the chest.

On Monday, Houston was certified to adult court and pleaded guilty to second-degree murder while committing a felony, admitting that he fired a long-barreled revolver four to five times at Johnson’s SUV as he was driving away. Ramsey County District Judge Jacob Kraus then gave Houston the sentence, which was part of an agreement with the prosecution.

Devon A. Johnson (Courtesy of the family)

Dennis Gerhardstein, spokesman for the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, said Wednesday the length of the prison term fell within state sentencing guidelines because Houston had no previous felony convictions.

“It’s almost as if it’s a slap in the face,” Johnson’s mother, Monique Johnson, said Wednesday of the sentence. “On one hand, to me, it can never be enough time to spend for my son’s life to be taken. And especially that his life was taken just because someone decided he was going to do it that day.”

The shooting

According to the charges, multiple people called 911 about 11 p.m. on March 14, reporting hearing gunshots, vehicles crashing and two to four people running from the area in Dayton’s Bluff.

Officers found broken glass in the parking lot of Wilson Hi-Rise on Wilson Avenue near Johnson Parkway. There were two vehicles in the area that had heavy front-end damage, and police determined the vehicle that struck them was no longer there.

A short time later and about a mile away, officers saw a Jeep that also had heavy front-end damage and was being driven erratically in the area of Minnehaha Avenue and Frank Street. Officers stopped the vehicle and the driver said his friend had been shot and was in the backseat.

Officers gave CPR to Johnson until St. Paul Fire Department medics arrived. They attempted to resuscitate Johnson, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police found suspected marijuana in plastic bags, a digital scale and $346 in the Jeep, the charges said.

Johnson’s friend later told police he was initially too scared to tell them what happened, but “now wanted to be truthful.” He said a man he communicated with on Facebook Messenger wanted to buy marijuana from him and sent him the address on Wilson Avenue.

Johnson and his friend pulled up. The marijuana buyer approached with someone they didn’t know, who police later identified as Houston.

Johnson’s friend said he and the buyer were talking about the marijuana sale when Houston pointed a gun at him and told him to hand over the marijuana. He said he grabbed the gun when the teen put it in front of his face while pointing it at Johnson, who was the driver. “After a short struggle, the gun went off” while Johnson began to drive away.

Johnson crashed into a couple of vehicles and his friend was able to get the vehicle to stop, put Johnson in the backseat and start to drive him to the hospital.

The buyer later said he’d been trying to digitally send money to Johnson’s friend for the marijuana and didn’t know Houston would try to rob the man and he yelled at him to stop.

Another person, though, told police that the buyer, Houston and two other people “started talking about setting up a robbery.” The person later saw the buyer and described him as “hysterical over what happened.” Houston didn’t return to the apartment where they’d been.

Investigators learned that Houston and another person, who was said to have a long-barreled revolver that Houston used in the shooting, were arrested March 29 in St. Cloud. Law enforcement collected several cellphones and a firearm, which was not a revolver.

St. Paul police tried to talk to Houston and the other person, who “declined to provide substantive statements to investigators,” the court document said.

Houston was originally charged April 23 by juvenile petition with intentional second-degree murder, not premeditated; unintentional second-degree murder while committing a felony; and two counts of attempted second-degree murder.

A mother’s grief

Johnson’s mother said he lived with her in Robbinsdale and had been working as a personal care attendant, taking care of his grandmother and another person.

He had played basketball and football at Minneapolis’ Patrick Henry High School. He signed a letter of intent to attend Mesabi Range College and play football, though he didn’t go because he became a father, his mother said.

She said she is now left with “picking up the pieces,” including raising two of her son’s children that he had custody of and are now ages 5 and 10 months old.

She gave a victim impact statement at Wednesday’s sentencing, telling the court that Houston “not only killed my son that night but he killed a part of all of us in our family.”

She said her grandchildren “will never remember or know their father, will never know the sound of his voice. But more than anything, they will never feel his beating heart.”

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A time for celebration and reflection for the Lynx at a press conference Wednesday unsurprisingly took a turn in a direction Lynx and Team USA coach Cheryl Reeve didn’t want to travel down. Reeve was asked about criticism she received during the Paris Olympics for starting veteran guard Diana Taurasi in group phase games.

Criticism is part of the gig in sports, particularly coaching, but it’s heightened when you coach a program as dominant as Team USA Women’s Basketball, which has now won eight straight gold medals and 61 straight Olympic contests. And yet still, even after edging France by one point in a dramatic thriller in the gold medal game, there were plenty of opinions spouted off about what could’ve been done differently to exert extra dominance.

Reeve felt fortunate the Lynx’s dynasty prepared her in many ways for her role as Team USA coach. Minnesota won four WNBA titles over seven seasons under Reeve, and with that success came expectations and naysayers. But it’s hit a new level in pro sports even in recent years. Reeve noted broadcasts are often dedicated to who is or isn’t playing, or who was or wasn’t selected to the team.

“This is what it’s become,” Reeve told reporters. “And so it makes the seat I was sitting in a bit more challenging, a little less rewarding. I think that’s a sad commentary. I’m really hopeful that we can find our way, going forward. The vitriol only hurts the game, and we can do much better than that.”

Lynx forward Napheesa Collier, who played a pivotal role in the United State’s run to another gold medal with her play on both ends of the floor, frankly preferred the tightness of that 67-66 victory over France.

“It was so earned,” she said. “Not that it’s not earned every time, but to fight to get a gold medal is a great feeling.”

Collier said the high level of expectation of the Team USA women’s basketball program is “good and bad.”

“It’s the hardest thing to do in the world. You are literally the best in the world at that time, and to reach that is really, really hard,” Collier said. “But it’s amazing, because it comes with the level of excellence that has preceded you before that. And to be a part of something that dominant is an amazing experience.”

But, Collier noted, “it comes with a lot of pressure, and sometimes that is unfair.”

After the women’s team held on for gold, Reeve received a text from U.S. men’s coach, Steve Kerr, that read “Welcome to the ‘Thank God’ club.”

“That’s what it is,” Reeve said. “It’s either relief or misery when you’re a coach.”

Collier felt the relief, as well, but it came with another emotion.

“So much elation,” she said.

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