Update: Three charged with murder, robbery; one more suspect arrested
As a 16-year-old lay dying in a St. Paul alley, shot in the head during a robbery, her 20-year-old sister held her.
“She wasn’t moving at all,” Brittany Rock said Monday. “I grabbed her and I was holding her. She was looking in my eyes and I just kept begging her, ‘Don’t die! Wake up!’ ” But Rock said Samantha Burnette passed away within a minute or two.
Rock believes her friend set them up to be robbed, which ended in Burnette being shot at about 7:30 Sunday morning in the Payne-Phalen neighborhood.
Police arrested two people on Sunday and an additional two men on Monday. A 32-year-old man, who is being held on suspicion of murder, got out of prison in August on intensive supervised release in a gun case and had a warrant out for his arrest when Burnette died.
Burnette was a junior at Minnetonka High School and lived with her grandmother in Minnetonka. She was spending time over the weekend with her mother and sister, who live in St. Paul.
“She came to visit and now she’ll never be able to go home,” Rock said.
DRIVE HOME TURNS INTO ROBBERY
The shooting happened after Rock, her younger sister and two friends were hanging out and driving around, Rock said. Kalisa Chardale Smith, whom Rock had known since April, was supposed to be driving them home Sunday morning; Burnette had fallen asleep in the back seat.
Smith, 29, of St. Paul, pulled into an alley near Walsh Street and Sims Avenue and exited her car to talk to someone. She approached a parked truck, got inside and they drove off, Rock said.
“Maybe 10, 15 seconds later, two guys came walking from around the garage up to the car,” Rock said. She was in the front passenger seat, and another friend was in the back with Burnette.
Rock tried to move into the driver’s seat to pull away, but the two males got in Smith’s car and one pulled a gun. He hit Rock with it, and the suspects demanded everything they had, Rock said.
“She happened to be with me, but it was the wrong place at the wrong time,” she said. “They tried to rob us, had the gun pointed in my face and hit me with the gun. She was just trying to fight for me and she got shot in the head.”
Rock was able to get out of the car and she tried to open her sister’s door to help her when she heard a gunshot. Then, the men pushed Burnette out of the car.
Officers were called to a report of shots fired about 7:30 a.m. Sunday and found Burnette in the alley. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
Rock’s other friend was able to get out without being injured and the suspects drove off in Smith’s car.
Paramedics took Rock to Regions Hospital, where she said she needed staples in her head for a wound caused by being hit with a gun.
“I’m feeling horrible,” Rock said. “I feel like it’s my fault I couldn’t save her. She looked at me after she was shot and her eyes looked so, so, so scared.”
FOUR ARRESTED SUNDAY, MONDAY
Police arrested Smith about five hours after the shooting on suspicion of aiding an offender to avoid arrest, according to a Ramsey County jail log.
Rock said Smith knew the men involved in the robbery and shooting. Police arrested Christopher Rayshawn Calloway, 32, of St. Paul, on Sunday on suspicion of murder and a parole violation.
On Monday afternoon, police also arrested Davonte Bobo, 24, of West St. Paul, and Vincent Reanell Harris, 29, of St. Paul, on suspicion of murder, according to a Ramsey County jail log.
Police arrested Calloway in the 200 block of Second Avenue South in South St. Paul, according to a Ramsey County jail log, which also indicated he had a parole violation warrant.
Calloway got out of prison on Aug. 15 on intensive supervised release. He had pleaded guilty in March 2013 to being a felon in possession of a firearm and motor vehicle theft.
In the 2013 case, police found Calloway driving a vehicle in South St. Paul that had been reported stolen by carjacking with a firearm in West St. Paul, according to a criminal complaint. Police found a replica BB gun in the vehicle, the complaint said. He was sentenced to five years in prison.
The warrant for Calloway was issued Sept. 16 because he was not in contact with Dakota County Community Corrections, which was supervising him, according to Brian Kopperud, director of the agency. He also was not at his address when he was supposed to be, Kopperud said.
Calloway’s criminal history includes a 2002 conviction for fourth-degree assault in Goodhue County and a 2007 conviction of armed robbery with a firearm in Illinois.
SCHOOL, FAMILY TRYING TO COPE
Burnette lived in Minnetonka with her grandmother Bonni Boudreau, who said she raised her since she was 1 year old. She spent about every other weekend in St. Paul with her mother and Rock, Boudreau said.
Rock and Burnette had become especially close lately.
“She was an amazing person, had bright eyes and she never harmed anybody,” Rock said. “She looked forward to everything that she did and she did it with happiness. She wanted to be like me. … She also wanted to be a lawyer, she wanted to travel. There was a lot that she wanted to do and she’ll never be able to do it.”
Jeff Erickson, Minnetonka High School principal, spoke with students about her death on Monday and held a moment of silence.
Erickson wrote in an email to parents that he was “shocked and saddened to report a second Minnetonka student death in less than one week.” Scott Alan Berzins, 17, was struck by a vehicle and killed as he crossed a highway in Minnetonka last week.
“Samantha Burnette was a junior — only 16 years old,” Erickson wrote. “There are still so many unanswered questions. … There is nothing about this tragedy that makes any sense. Hearing about Samantha’s death breaks my heart. We don’t usually think about death as something that happens to teens — so to have two classmates die in the last week, leaves us confused. It really shakes our understanding of how things are supposed to be.”
Burnette would have been 17 in November. Boudreau got her an iPhone just after the school year started and the teen had told her, “Grandma, you don’t have to get me anything else for my birthday. Just make me a good dinner,” Boudreau recalled Monday.
Burnette enjoyed listening to music, skateboarding, and hanging out with her sister and two nieces.
At school, she was “a very positive presence, very passionate,” Erickson said. “People commented that her smile lit up the room. She had a big heart and was an incredibly loyal friend.”
Burnette’s favorite part of school was socializing — she could be outgoing, but also shy, her grandmother said. The teen had fetal alcohol syndrome and schoolwork was difficult for her, so she had to work hard, Boudreau said.
“What she did accomplish was major and just getting to 11th grade was a major thing for us,” she said.
HOW TO HELP
Minnetonka High School parents set up a fund to help cover expenses for the families of the two students killed in the last week. Donations can be made at any Wells Fargo branch (use the Berzin or Burnette family name), via online banking for Wells Fargo Bank customers (account #1422246015), or dropped off or mailed to Minnetonka High School, 18301 Highway 7, Minnetonka, MN 55345.
