A St. Paul man was sentenced to 15 years in prison Wednesday for fatally shooting a man in the head outside a University Avenue bar in 2019.

Devante Lattrele Jennings, 29, pleaded guilty in May to the murder of 33-year-old Michael Gray of St. Paul at the now-closed Johnny Baby’s at University Avenue and Chatsworth Street. Jennings was charged in April 2023 while incarcerated on an earlier firearms conviction out of Ramsey County.

According to the criminal complaint, St. Paul police responded to reports of a shooting outside Johnny Baby’s about 2 a.m. on May 4, 2019, where they found Gray lying in the parking lot with gunshot wounds to the back of his head and an arm. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police recovered four bullet casings, all fired from the same gun.

A witness told police that Gray had been by a silver sedan that was occupied by three people. The witness said it looked like Gray was trying to get into the rear passenger side seat when the front passenger leaned out of the car and shot him.

Investigators learned a Kia sedan with Wisconsin license plates was at the scene when the shooting occurred and traced it to a man identified in court documents by the initials TC, who knew the car’s owner. They also found a cigarette butt in the vehicle with Jennings’ DNA on it.

Jennings initially told investigators in July 2019 he had bought drugs from TC months earlier and smoked a cigarette in the front seat, but denied being at Johnny Baby’s at the time of the shooting.

Surveillance footage

Surveillance footage outside Johnny Baby’s captured the shooting.

Jennings, TC and a third man arrived at the bar in the Kia sedan about 1:30 a.m. The third man, identified in court documents as WB, got out of the car and walked into the bar, bumping into Gray on his way inside, the complaint says.

WB walked back out to the parking lot about 1:42 a.m. and remained there with Jennings and TC until about 2 a.m., when the three men got back into the Kia. Gray approached the Kia and appeared to speak with Jennings, who was in the front passenger seat, before backing away and walking toward the back of the car. Jennings then leaned out of the front passenger window and shot Gray.

WB was killed in September 2019 near the St. Paul Saloon by friends of Gray, the complaint says.

In March 2023, while interviewing Jennings at the Moose Lake prison, investigators showed him still frames from Johnny Baby’s surveillance footage. They told Jennings they had identified him as the person in the footage.

“Jennings looked at the photos and sighed,” the complaint says. “Jennings did not deny he was the person in the photos. Jennings then said he would wait to talk to the investigator at the Ramsey County jail with an attorney.”

Jennings, whose first name is also spelled Devonte in court records, was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder while committing a felony. In exchange for his guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to dismiss a second-degree intentional murder charge at sentencing.

Johnny Baby’s, which had been the site of several shootings in recent years, closed in March 2020 and was renovated into a retail establishment.

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