James Harmon was shot in the head as he slept in his St. Paul home by a man he didn’t know and who chose the house at random.

James Harmon (Courtesy of the family)

On Wednesday, nearly one year to the day of Harmon’s killing, his siblings addressed the court in victim impact statements before the man who pulled the trigger was sent to prison.

“I’m still waiting for somebody to tell me he wasn’t so ruthlessly ripped away from us,” Harmon’s sister Raquel Lopez said, sobbing. “Please tell me he wasn’t shot execution-style in his head while he rested for work the next day by a complete and total stranger, for no reason at all.”

Tevon Antowon King broke into the home in the 1100 block of White Bear Avenue on June 6, 2023, shooting Harmon, a 36-year-old father of four, in his basement bedroom at close range.

King pleaded guilty in April to second-degree murder and first-degree burglary with a dangerous weapon as part of an agreement with the prosecution that included a 25½-year prison term, which Ramsey County District Judge Thomas Gilligan Jr handed down Wednesday.

King, 28, of St. Paul, entered a Norgaard plea. Under the plea, a defendant says they are unable to remember what happened due to drug use or mental health impairment at the time, but acknowledges there is enough evidence for a jury to convict beyond a reasonable doubt.

‘That is an execution’

A SWAT team arrested King after he then broke into a home five houses away from Harmon’s, according to the charges. King, who was found sleeping in the basement with a Springfield 9mm handgun next to him, had fired a shot outside the home, then went inside and threatened to shoot a 29-year-old man, who hid in a bathroom and called 911.

Investigators tied King to Harmon’s murder by the handgun and shell casings that were found at both homes.

Tevon Antowon King (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

The same handgun also fired casings recovered at the scenes of two previous St. Paul shooting incidents, authorities said. King reportedly fired a gun into the air during an argument with his girlfriend in 2020. And King’s father used the gun to kill a dog in 2021.

Officers spoke to King’s co-worker, who was identified in the charges as MC. He said he and others hung out with King after work on June 6, that they drank and smoked weed. He said King believed people were following him, and he believed King had a mental breakdown.

MC said King’s behavior also made him uncomfortable, so he decided to take King and his girlfriend to King’s mother’s house.

MC said when he turned west on Maryland Avenue at White Bear Lake Avenue, he heard “pop, pop, pop.” He saw a black handgun in King’s hands and believed he fired out the back window. MC said he did not know King had a handgun on him and that he was scared for his life.

MC stopped the truck and told the two to get out. When he got home, he called King’s mother, and he “told her something was wrong with him,” the charges say.

King’s mother told police her son was suicidal and having problems with drug use, the charges say. She said he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder.

In an interview with investigators, King denied having a weapon, but he was unsure if his girlfriend had her Springfield 9mm handgun with her. He said they drank and smoked weed, which he thinks was laced with fentanyl unbeknownst to him.

King told police he does not remember anything after MC’s house, that the next thing he remembered was waking up to police yelling at him with an AR-15 in his face. He was upset that police woke him up.

King said he did not know whose house he slept in.

When shown photos of Harmon and his roommate, King said he did not know either of them. He denied hurting anyone.

King then said he might have found a gun in the area, and that if Harmon was shot while sleeping then “that is an execution and (expletive) up,” the charges say. “King said he is possibly being framed.”

‘Assassinated’

Harmon, who was known as Jimmy, grew up in Jersey City, N.J., and moved to Minnesota after his brother, Felix Lopez, did.

“Jimmy was a beacon of light with many talents that were stripped away by a coward,” Felix said in court Wednesday via Zoom. “Jimmy grew up in the inner city where life wasn’t easy. He moved to Minnesota to live with me and my wife.”

Harmon was warm and compassionate and a loving father, uncle, cousin, nephew, brother-in-law, grandson, son and the “best baby brother anyone could ask for,” Lopez said.

Harmon was a “precious soul that was assassinated, not murdered,” Lopez said. “He shot my brother in his sleep. And that’s what an assassin does. We will never have our brother back.”

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NEW YORK — Royce Lewis’ injured quadriceps turned him into the Twins’ starting third baseman. Carlos Correa’s strained intercostal turned him into their shortstop. Byron Buxton’s sore knee then made him their center fielder.

Minnesota Twins’ Willi Castro before a baseball game against the Washington Nationals, Monday, May 20, 2024, in Washington. (Nick Wass / Associated Press)

And now, finally, Edouard Julien’s demotion has led to Willi Castro becoming the Twins’ second baseman. Castro, the only player to appear in every single game this season, has also become one of the most valuable because of his versatility.

“I feel really happy because being in this organization, it’s a winning team and they’re going to use me wherever they need me, and I will get the job done,” Castro said. “They believe in me a lot, and I just try to do my best every time I play those positions.”

When the Twins were deciding how to make room on the roster for Lewis upon his return, knowing they could slot Castro in at second base helped allow the Twins make the choice they felt was best.

Castro said manager Rocco Baldelli called him into the office on Tuesday to tell him that he would be focusing more at second base for the time being, though he started in left field on Wednesday.

“Almost every decision that we have to make on the position player side — I don’t even mean roster moves — I mean everything that we do is affected, and the number of options that we have are almost compounded based on the presence of Willi Castro,” Baldelli said. “He allows us to almost make whatever decisions we want to make. Daily decisions, roster decisions, every kind of decision.”

That’s because he can handle so many different positions capably. Castro came up as a shortstop but credited Detroit manager A.J. Hinch with being the one who “got me to being the player that I am today.”

And that, now, is an everyday player.

“Obviously, as a player, you want to be in the lineup every day,” Castro said. “It’s a privilege for me to be in there and help this team win.”

Lewis honors idol

As he dug in before his first plate appearance on Tuesday in New York, Royce Lewis wanted to pay homage to his favorite baseball player growing up. The third baseman held out his right arm out straight behind him, just like Yankees hall of famer Derek Jeter used to do.

His tribute didn’t work out quite as he envisioned — home plate umpire Chris Segal thought Lewis was trying to call time out and granted it to him, something they wound up laughing about after the fact, Lewis said.

“I just wanted to imitate him and mimic him because he was my idol,” Lewis said of Jeter. “To be here for the first time, I thought it was just a good ode to such a gentleman and a player that I very well respected.”

Briefly

Pablo López will take the ball for the final game of the series against the Yankees on Thursday, opposed by Marcus Stroman. Stroman threw six scoreless innings against the Twins, giving up just two hits, in a Yankees’ win last month.

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Cult country star Sturgill Simpson will return to the road in September and will play his first Twin Cities show in eight years when he headlines St. Paul’s Roy Wilkins Auditorium on Sept. 25.

Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. June 14 through Ticketmaster. Simpson is offering a presale to fans who sign up at sturgillsimpsonlive.com. He’s also using Ticketmaster’s Face Value Exchange, where tickets can only be resold at the original price. Neither the promoter nor the venue announced prices.

Simpson, 45, grew up in Kentucky and enrolled in the Navy in his senior year of high school. He served for three years and ultimately moved back to Lexington, where he formed the band Sunday Valley. But it was short-lived and Simpson put his focus on building a career at a Salt Lake City railroad freight shipping yard, where he ultimately ended up managing. At the urging of his wife and friends, he tried music again and toured with Sunday Valley until they broke up in 2012.

The following year, Simpson released his solo debut “High Top Mountain,” which earned warm reviews and comparisons to Waylon Jennings and Merle Haggard. He spent the rest of the decade expanding his audience with new albums and constant touring, including a gig opening for Haggard himself.

After an extended break, Simpson returned to the road in 2021 but cut the outing short due to a vocal cord injury. The upcoming tour supports his sixth solo album “Passage Du Desir,” which is due out July 12 on his own label. He has also adopted a new stage name, Johnny Blue Skies.

The show will be the first major concert at Roy Wilkins in years. Tours have largely avoided it in favor of the similarly sized Armory in downtown Minneapolis, which opened in 2018.

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By LAURAN NEERGAARD (AP Medical Writer)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A man’s death in Mexico was caused by a strain of bird flu called H5N2 that has never before been found in a human, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The WHO said it wasn’t clear how the man became infected, although H5N2 has been reported in poultry in Mexico.

There are numerous types of bird flu. H5N2 is not the same strain that has infected multiple dairy cow herds in the U.S. That strain is called H5N1 and three farmworkers have gotten mild infections.

Other bird flu varieties have killed people across the world in previous years, including 18 people in China during an outbreak of H5N6 in 2021, according to a timeline of bird flu outbreaks from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Mexican health officials alerted the WHO that a 59-year-old man who died in a Mexico City hospital had the virus despite no known exposure to poultry or other animals.

According to family members, the WHO release said, the patient had been bedridden for unrelated reasons before developing a fever, shortness of breath and diarrhea on April 17. Mexico’s public health department said in a statement that he had underlying ailments, including chronic kidney failure, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Hospital care was sought on April 24 and the man died the same day.

Initial tests showed an unidentified type of flu that subsequent weeks of lab testing confirmed was H5N2.

The WHO said the risk to people in Mexico is low, and that no further human cases have been discovered so far despite testing people who came in contact with the deceased at home and in the hospital.

There had been three poultry outbreaks of H5N2 in nearby parts of Mexico in March but authorities haven’t been able to find a connection. Mexican officials also are monitoring birds near a shallow lake on the outskirts of Mexico City.

Whenever bird flu circulates in poultry, there is a risk that people in close contact with flocks can become infected. Health authorities are closely watching for any signs that the viruses are evolving to spread easily from person to person, and experts are concerned as more mammal species contract bird flu viruses.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.