A man currently serving a federal sentence has been given 16½ years in prison for his role in a 2019 fatal shooting near a St. Paul bar, a murder the lead prosecutor called “cold-blooded revenge” for a killing four months earlier.

John Sheldon Pickens Jr. did not fire the gun that killed 29-year-old Wayne Rodrick Brown across the street from St. Paul Saloon in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood on Sept. 28, 2019. Video surveillance footage from inside the bar showed Pickens shaking hands with Brown, then immediately making a phone call to Derwin Idell Moore and tipping him of Brown’s whereabouts. Moore drove to the bar, walked up to Brown and shot him in the chest.

Wayne Rodrick Brown (Courtesy photo)

Brown’s killing was retaliation for the May 4, 2019, fatal shooting of 33-year-old Michael Gray outside the now-closed Johnny Baby’s bar at University Avenue and Chatsworth Street in St. Paul, according to Ramsey County prosecutors.

A grand jury in November 2022 indicted Pickens and Moore on first-degree premeditated murder and other charges. Moore, 38, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in September 2023 after reaching a plea deal with the prosecution, agreeing to a nearly 34-year prison term. The sentence was handed down on Oct. 11, 2023.

“This was an incredibly brutal and inappropriate murder,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Elizabeth Lamin told a judge at Moore’s sentencing, according to a court transcript. “This wasn’t an argument that Mr. Moore had. This wasn’t some sort of heated passion. This was cold-blooded revenge and completely unnecessary.”

Pickens reached a deal with the prosecution in July and pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting an offender. He was sentenced Friday to the prison term that was part of the plea deal.

Pickens is already in prison after being convicted by a federal jury in June 2021 of one count of possession with intent to distribute cocaine and sentenced to 11½ years.

Moore is also serving a federal sentence. He pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and was given 6½ years in July 2021.

Both their state sentences for Brown’s murder are running concurrent with the federal prison terms.

Retaliation for earlier killing

Police officers were sent to the area of Hudson Road and Earl Street, just north of Interstate 94, shortly after 11 p.m. on a shots-fired call. They found Brown lying on the south side of Hudson Road. Brown, a St. Paul father of two young children, was pronounced dead at Regions Hospital.

Police said at the time the shooting did not appear to be random.

The bar’s video footage showed Pickens, after greeting Brown, making a phone call. Brown then left and walked outside to a dice game, while Pickens remained on the phone and looked in the direction of Brown for over nine minutes, according to court documents.

A witness told police the shooter emerged from between two buildings, walked up to Brown and fired two times with a black semiautomatic handgun. The shooter then walked away.

Investigators collected additional video footage that showed the driver of a Buick sedan stop in the alley behind the bar before the shooting and walk toward the bar. At about 11:05 p.m., the driver, whose face was covered, ran back to the car and sped away.

Investigators discovered Moore was the owner of a Buick Allure sedan, and databases showed that Moore and Pickens were close associates.

Witnesses told police they believed Brown’s killing was in retaliation for Gray’s murder, and police databases also showed that both Moore and Pickens had been associated with Gray since 2004, court documents say.

Derwin Idell Moore and John Sheldon Pickens Jr. (Courtesy of the Ramsey County sheriff’s office)

Pickens told police during an interview that he was “very close to (Gray) and was very upset by (Gray’s) murder and by the fact that no one had been held accountable for (Gray’s) death,” prosecutor Lamin wrote in a court document.

Brown was identified as being in a Kia sedan when the shooter stuck his hand out of the car’s window and shot Gray, of St. Paul, in the head in the Johnny Baby’s parking lot, according to court documents. The shooter, Devante Lattrele Jennings, was charged in the murder nearly four years later, in April 2023, while serving a prison sentence on a September 2021 conviction for illegally possessing a firearm.

Jennings, 29, pleaded guilty to killing Gray in May and was sentenced to 15 years in prison in July.

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