A 39-year-old Newport man was sentenced Tuesday to 30½ years in prison for fatally shooting his cousin at the Newport Transit Center, shortly after they met to go shopping.

Sylvester Tremaine Jones pleaded guilty in May to second-degree intentional murder-not premeditated for killing Terrell Eshawn McIntyre, a 39-year-old from Coon Rapids who was found in his SUV dead of multiple gunshot wounds. Jones was arrested the night of the killing and later admitted to it, according to the criminal complaint, which does not mention a motive.

Terrell Eshawn McIntyre, 39, of Coon Rapids, was fatally shot at the Newport Transit Center on Feb. 6, 2023. (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

The sentence handed down by Washington County District Judge Siv Mjanger was the result of a plea agreement that requires Jones to serve the maximum presumptive sentence called for by state sentencing guidelines. He was ordered to pay $8,500 in restitution for reimbursement of funeral expenses.

Jones’ attorney, Rebecca Waxse, said at sentencing the killing would not have happened but for Jones’ struggles with his mental health. She said they reviewed his mental health records leading up to his guilty plea and decided not to move forward with a mental health defense.

“But I think he’s in a better place today,” Waxse said. “And I just want the court to be aware that the man standing before you is not an evil monster. He’s a really good person who had a horrible situation, made a horrible mistake.”

In a statement afterward, County Attorney Kevin Magnuson said, “Our thoughts go out to the family of the victim of this totally senseless crime. Any homicidal violence in our community is terrifying but, thankfully, rare.”

He shot between eight and 10 times

Deputies were called to the transit center parking lot — located at 250 Red Rock Crossing, south of Interstate 494 — just before 11 a.m. Feb. 6, 2023, after a witness saw a man slumped over in the driver’s seat of an SUV, and a pool of blood on the ground.

Deputies found a black 2016 Ford Escape with the front driver’s side door open and McIntyre slumped in the driver’s seat with his left leg hanging out of the SUV. He was dead.

Spent .22-caliber bullet casings were found inside the SUV and on the ground just outside of it. The SUV had no damage to suggest that shots were fired through the vehicle from outside of it, the complaint says.

A sheriff’s detective interviewed the 911 caller, who said that he had seen a man walking from the direction of the SUV toward the adjacent apartment complex. A review of nearby video surveillance backed up what the caller said he saw.

Detectives reviewed sheriff’s office records and learned that the SUV had been issued a parking ticket on Nov. 15 when it was parked in front of Jones’ home in the 1700 block of First Avenue North, about three blocks from the transit station.

A detective spoke with a relative of McIntyre and was told that he and Jones were cousins.

Deputies reviewed video surveillance from the apartment complex near the transit station parking lot. It showed that McIntyre arrived at the lot in the SUV at 9:34 a.m. and that 10 minutes later Jones got into the passenger seat. About 19 seconds later, Jones got out and walked out of the camera’s view.

During a search of Jones’ residence, detectives found in his bedroom a Sig Sauer .22-caliber handgun on the floor, several boxes of ammunition and clothes that matched those the suspect was seen on video wearing. Jones was home when the search warrant was served and he was arrested.

Sylvester Tremaine Jones (Courtesy of the Washington County Sheriff’s Office)

In an interview, Jones said he had exchanged text messages with McIntyre about meeting at the apartment complex parking lot and his cousin bringing him to a Target store. He said he shot McIntyre between eight and 10 times.

Seven bullets or bullet fragments were recovered from McIntyre’s body during an autopsy. The gunshots included one that entered his leg and severed his femoral artery.

Minnesota court records show Jones has one previous felony conviction — possessing a firearm with an altered serial number in 2010 in Ramsey County.

A father first

McIntyre was a bit of an introvert who mostly enjoyed going to work and taking care of his son, said his mother, Katherine Jones, in a victim impact statement read by Assistant Washington County Attorney Keshini Ratnayake.

McIntyre was a wonderful child and had a great life “until it was abruptly taken from him,” his mother’s statement read.

Sylvester Jones told the court before receiving his sentence that he realizes McIntyre died “too early from something I did. And I just apologize for the whole situation.”

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Nicolae Miu, who was found guilty in April of fatally stabbing 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and wounding four other tubers on western Wisconsin’s Apple River in 2022, could be sentenced on Wednesday to 96 years and three months in prison.

That’s if St. Croix County Circuit Court Judge R. Michael Waterman decides that Miu, 54, of Prior Lake, deserves the maximum penalties allowed under Wisconsin law. The reckless homicide conviction carries a maximum penalty of 45 years in prison, followed by 20 years of extended supervision. He also is being sentenced for four convictions of first-degree recklessly endangering safety with a dangerous weapon and one for misdemeanor battery with use of a dangerous weapon; those convictions carry penalties of up to 12½ each and 15 months, respectively, said St. Croix County District Attorney Karl Anderson.

Miu will be sentenced in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, two years and a day after his fatal confrontation with two groups of tubers in Somerset.

The hearing will start with victim-impact statements, which are expected to last an hour. The State will then make its argument, followed by the defense, and then the judge will hand down the sentence, Anderson said.

The sentencing hearing, except for the victim-impact statements, will be livestreamed on local TV news stations and Court TV.

Miu testified at his trial in April that he feared for his life and acted in self-defense on July 30, 2022, when he fatally stabbed Schuman, of Stillwater, and seriously injured tubers not in the teen’s group.

Ryhley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and brothers Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, both in their early 20s, of Luck, Wis., all suffered puncture or slash wounds in the abdomen or upper torso.

During the trial, Miu’s attorneys tried to portray a scene in which Miu was surrounded by a drunken, angry mob who called him a “pedophile” and “raper” and attacked him. Miu said he was carrying a snorkel and goggles while looking for a friend’s lost cellphone contained in a waterproof floating bag and that he feared for his life during the confrontation.

The prosecution argued that Miu had multiple opportunities to walk away from the taunting teens, and that the confrontation only turned violent after he became angry and punched Madison Coen, who was part of the Carlson brothers’ group.

During his closing argument, Anderson said the stabbings were “absolutely senseless and horrific acts of violence.”

“All Nicolae Miu had to do was walk away,” he said. “All he had to do was walk away.”

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By MELISSA GOLDIN

With fewer than 100 days until the 2024 election, social media users are claiming that a lack of Google autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump and his attempted assassination is evidence of election interference.

Many posts include screenshots showing what the autocomplete feature, which predicts what users are trying to type, has generated for text such as “attempted assassination of tr” or “president donald.” Among the pictured results for the former phrase are references to other assassination attempts, including that of Harry Truman and Gerald Ford, but nothing for Trump. The latter provides two options — “president donald duck” and “president donald regan.”

Multiple high-profile figures, including Trump and sitting members of Congress, promoted the claim across social media platforms, collectively amassing more than 1 million likes and shares by Tuesday. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google attributed the situation to existing protections against autocomplete predictions associated with political violence, noting that “no manual action was taken” to suppress information about Trump.

Search engine experts said there are many reasons that could explain why some autocomplete results concerning the former president were not appearing.

Here’s a closer look at the facts.

CLAIM: Google is engaging in election interference by censoring autocomplete results about former President Donald Trump, including the assassination attempt at his Pennsylvania rally on July 13.

THE FACTS: It is true that Google’s autocomplete feature as of Monday was not finishing certain phrases related to Trump and the assassination attempt as shown in screenshots spreading online, but there is no evidence it was related to election interference.

By Tuesday, some of the same terms were providing relevant autocomplete results. The text “president donald” now also suggests “Donald Trump” as a search option. Similarly, the phrase “attempted assassination of” includes Trump’s name in autocomplete predictions. Adding “tr” to the same phrase though makes the option disappear.

Completed searches about Trump and the assassination attempt done on both Monday and Tuesday yielded extensive relevant results regardless of what autocomplete predictions came up.

Google told the AP that its autocomplete feature has automated protections regarding violent topics, including for searches about theoretical assassination attempts. The company further explained that its systems were out of date even prior to July 13, meaning that the protections already in place couldn’t take into account that an actual assassination attempt had occurred.

Additional autocomplete results now appearing about Trump are the result of systemic improvements — rather than targeted manual fixes — that will affect many other topics, according to the company.

“We’re rolling out improvements to our Autocomplete systems to show more up-to-date predictions,” Google told The Associated Press in a statement. “The issues are beginning to resolve, and we’ll continue to make improvements as needed. As always, predictions change over time and there may be some imperfections. Autocomplete helps save people time, but they can always search for whatever they want, and we will continue to connect them with helpful information.”

Search engine experts told the AP that they don’t see evidence of suspicious activities on Google’s part and that there are plenty of other reasons to explain why there have been a lack of autocomplete predictions about Trump.

“It’s very plausible that there’s nothing nefarious here, that it’s other systems that are set up for neutral or good purposes that are causing these query suggestions to not show up,” said Michael Ekstrand, an assistant professor at Drexel University who studies AI-powered information access systems. “I don’t have a reason not to believe Google’s claim that this is just normal systems for other purposes, particularly around political violence.”

Thorsten Joachims, a professor at Cornell University who researches machine learning for search engines, explained that autocomplete tools typically work by looking at queries people make frequently over a certain period of time, providing the most frequent completions of those queries. Beyond that, a search engine may automatically prune predictions based on concerns such as safety and privacy.

This means that it’s plausible that Google’s autocomplete feature wouldn’t have accounted for recent searches about the assassination attempt on Trump, especially if its systems indeed had not been updated since before the shooting.

“Depending on how big the window is that they’re averaging over, that may simply not be a frequent query,” Joachims said. “And it may not be a candidate for autocompletion.” He added that it’s typical not to update a search model on a daily basis, given the costs and technical risks involved.

A 2020 Google blog post about its autocomplete feature describes how the system reflects previous searches and why users might not see certain predictions, including those that are violent in nature. The post also explains that predictions may vary based on variables such as a user’s location, the language they speak or rising interest in a topic.

Both Ekstrand and Joachims agreed that proving bias in a complex system like Google’s search engine from the outside would be extremely difficult. It would require much more data than just a couple of searches, for example, and would risk setting off the company’s protections against data scraping, reverse engineering and fraud.

“In general, claims that platforms are taking particular targeted actions against specific people on political bases are hard to substantiate,” Ekstrand said. “They sometimes, I’m sure, happen, but there’s so many other explanations that it’s difficult to substantiate such claims.”

Joachims noted that the demographics of Google’s user base could impact the results of such a study if they skewed toward one side of the political aisle or another and therefore searched more for their preferred candidates. In other words, the way the system works would make it difficult to probe the system.

Technical issues aside, limiting autocomplete predictions as a method of political influence could simply be bad for business.

“Even if Google would like to do that, I think it would be a very bad decision because they could lose a lot of users,” said Ricardo Baeza-Yates, a professor at Northeastern University whose research includes web search and information retrieval.

___

Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.

St. Paul gymnast Suni Lee offered up the word — redemption — last month at the U.S. Olympic Trials in Minneapolis. That’s what the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris were all about for the U.S. women’s gymnastics team. Redemption.

After taking the silver medal at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, largely because the GOAT Simone Biles had to drop out of the competition at the last minute, Team USA vowed to be standing atop the podium in the end this time around.

The quintet of Lee, Biles, Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera made it happen on Tuesday night at Bercy Arena, winning the gold medal with a dominant performance that left absolutely no doubt. As the celebration unfolded for Team USA on the mat, more than 4,000 miles away, Lee’s family and friends matched the intensity inside Unison Restaurant on the outskirts of St. Paul.

“It’s so emotional to see her out there,” Lee’s cousin Nicole King said as her eyes welled up with tears. “We’re so proud of her. She worked so hard for all of this over the past few years. We knew she could do it, and to actually see it happen is really exciting.”

Though a handful of Lee’s immediate family were in Paris to watch her in person, nearly 100 people gathered back home on Tuesday afternoon for the spectacle.

Roughly a dozen rows of chairs were lined up in front of a large projection screen with a handful of tables positioned off to the side for additional seating. Most of the adults proudly rocked shirts with “Team Suni” emblazoned on the front as they fixated their eyes on the television broadcast.

As excited as Lee’s family and friends were back home, the competition started with Team USA on vault, and Lee was not a part of that rotation. The restlessness inside inside Unison Restaurant was palpable as everybody patiently waited for the focus to shift to uneven bars.

A boisterous chant of “USA! USA! USA!” broke out as Lee was finally shown warming up on screen.

The leaders of the chant were the Xiong sisters. They like to consider themselves Lee’s biggest fans and showed up decked out in red, white and blue, equipped with a drum they banged on whenever they felt the group wasn’t loud enough.

“The last time she was in the Olympics, it was still COVID, so we watched together in a cabin up north,” May Lee Xiong said. “As soon as we heard about this today, we knew we wanted to join in on the fun.”

The cheers disappated when it was Lee’s turn on uneven bars and silence filled the room. The tension built as she floated through the air, and while Lee had to battle through a minor mistake early on, she stuck the landing to produce a massive roar.

“It’s a lot to take in,” Lee’s uncle Peter Lee said midway through the competition. “I’m so nervous right now.”

Naturally, the most stressful event of the bunch followed, and Team USA moved to balance beam. Though a fall from Chiles produced some gasps, Lee followed it up with a nearly perfect effort to take the edge off, then Biles provided the exclamation point.

Frankly, with Team USA boasting a commanding lead, floor exercise felt more like a coronation. After Lee, Chiles, and Biles all finished solid routines, the only thing left to do was celebrate yet another accomplishment for the hometown hero.

“She’s definitely an inspiration,” said Lee’s nephew Keydrick Thao while surrounded by some of his cousins. “She’s out here achieving really great things, and I think when we as a family see her do that, it makes everybody want to aspire to achieve really great things, too.”

Maybe the coolest part came after Team USA officially won the gold medal. As Lee celebrated in Paris with her teammates, her family and friends back home hopped on FaceTime with her mom and dad, who were in the stands soaking in the moment.

It was emotional for everyone involved, especially considering everything Lee had to go through to work her way back from the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.

“Just seeing her compete again is a blessing,” Lee’s aunt Bernie Vang said. “She has a family back home that is always going to support her. We don’t care if she wins or loses. We love her no matter what.”