Man sentenced to 27 years in New Year's Eve shooting that injured 10-year-old
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A man who shot and injured a 10-year-old boy on New Year's Eve was sentenced to more than 27 years in prison on Friday.
Morris Ryan, 27, was found guilty in July of three counts of second-degree assault and one count each of drive-by shooting, first degree assault and attempted second-degree murder.
The criminal complaint states that Ryan was with 28-year-old Kelci Meyers that night, driving in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul. Ryan stopped behind the victim's residence and fired more than a dozen rounds. The boy's mother told police that she heard a man yell "f*** y'all, mother*******" before shots rang out, documents say.
One of the rounds hit her son in the stomach. Surveillance cameras captured Ryan's SUV at the scene of the shooting, and his phone pinged in the area.
Ryan and Meyers were arrested later at a Hastings residence, where police recovered seven handguns, documents say. Meyers told investigators she was once the victim's next-door neighbor and didn't get along with his mother.
Meyers was found guilty in April of aiding and abetting second-degree murder, aiding and abetting first-degree assault and aiding and abetting drive-by shooting. She was sentenced to more than 15 years in prison in June.
"I don't think there's a single adjective or word that adequately describes what happened here," said Judge Andrew Gordon on Friday. He called Ryan's actions on the night of the shooting "callous" and "senseless," especially since it resulted in violence against a child in the middle of the night, on a holiday.
Gordon sentenced Ryan to 219 months for one count of second-degree assault, with no adjudications for the other two counts. For the drive-by shooting, first-degree assault and attempted second degree murder counts, Ryan faces 36 months each, with his sentences running consecutively. In all he'll serve 327 months will receive credit for 251 days served.