A Ramsey County jury on Friday convicted a St. Paul man of first-degree premeditated murder and four other charges in the West Side killing of Casanova Carter, 26, whose funeral was the scene of more gunfire that claimed another man’s life and injured three others.

Casanova Carter (Courtesy of family)

Carter was playing a video game at his home in the 700 block of Winslow Avenue when a flurry of bullets were fired through his window at 10:15 p.m. Feb. 1, 2022. He was hit in the head, face and back by three bullets. Investigators recovered 18 spent casings outside the home that ballistics testing showed came from four guns — three 9mm and a .45 caliber.

Delaquay Levius Williams, 30, and three other men were charged in the killing. Jurors deliberated for a total of about five hours Thursday and Friday before finding Williams guilty of all counts: aiding and abetting first-degree premeditated murder; aiding and abetting first- and second-degree murder for the benefit of the gang; aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder; and possession of a firearm while ineligible.

Ramsey County District Judge Timothy Mulrooney set Williams’ sentencing for Jan. 29. The penalty for first-degree murder is a mandatory life sentence.

In its case against Williams, prosecutors relied on testimony from co-defendants Dai’Quan Lamar Husten and Montez Dalray Davis and introduced as evidence video surveillance footage, cellphone records and a DNA swab collected from the murder scene that matched Williams.

Prosecutors said Carter and the fourth co-defendant, Kendall Dvontae Pruitt, had recently started “beefing” after Carter called him a “snitch” in a Facebook post.

“We wouldn’t be here today, except for the gang culture of violence in response to disrespect,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Elizabeth Lamin said Thursday in closing arguments.

Carter and Pruitt had both been part of a federal indictment of Hit Squad gang members and both served time in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm, according to prosecutors. Williams was associated with the Hilltop Hustlers gang.

“Casanova Carter lived with a target on his back,” Lamin said. “He made some poor choices, but he would have had his entire life to make wiser choices and to be a better father, brother and man.”

Delaquay Levius Williams, Montez Dalray Davis, Kendall Dvontae Pruitt and Dai’Quan Lamar Husten. (Courtesy of Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

At Carter’s funeral Feb. 21, 2022, Agustin Martinez, 28, of Crystal, was shot to death and three other people were wounded by gunfire outside Simple Traditions by Bradshaw Funeral Home on St. Paul’s West Side.

Murder charges have not been filed in Martinez’s death, which police said was gang-related. Four men were sentenced to either prison or the county jail for their roles in the gun battle.

In exchange for cooperating in Williams’ case, the prosecution agreed to take first-degree murder charges off the table for Husten and Davis.

Williams’ attorney, assistant public defender Stephen Grigsby, told jurors during closing arguments that they should question the testimony of Husten and Davis and consider their motivation in giving it.

Pruitt, 27, of Minneapolis, also spoke with the prosecution prior to pleading guilty to second-degree intentional murder last year. In exchange for the plea, both sides agreed that his grand jury charges would be dropped. He was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

The murder cases against Davis, 26, of Minneapolis, and Husten, 26, of St. Paul, remain ongoing.

‘Cover up’

The prosecution Thursday played in court video surveillance that showed a Nissan Altima with no license plates drive past Carter’s home two minutes before the shooting and turn down a neighboring street. Shortly thereafter, four people walked into the yard.

Police are investigating a homicide after a man was found shot in a home in the 700 block of Winslow Avenue in St. Paul on Feb. 1, 2022. (Courtesy of the St. Paul Police Department)

Lamin told jurors that Williams, Davis and Pruitt walked to the north side of the home, where Carter was playing a video game in front of his window, and Husten went to the front door. “And Montez Davis told you … that Husten and Pruitt all have 9mms and that Williams has a .45,” she said. “He said, ‘(Pruitt) starts the shooting, then they all shoot.’ ”

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St. Paul police Sgt. Nichole Sipes testified Wednesday that the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension discovered the DNA swabbed from siding below Carter’s bedroom window was a major profile match to Williams.

Sipes said an FBI analysis of cellphone data placed the co-defendants’ phones together in St. Paul before the murder and immediately afterward.

Sipes also testified about what Lamin called Williams’ “cover up.” Under questioning by Lamin, Sipes said data showed that Williams turned off his phone just minutes before the killing and powered it back on a short time afterward. The phone analysis also showed he started using an app that tracks law enforcement calls around 10:30 p.m., and that he then made the first of what would be several searches for Carter’s sister’s Facebook page.

Later, Williams, while using a new phone, messaged Carter’s sister. “And we have her testimony about that, right?” Lamin told jurors. “He tells her that she has to keep her head up. … The only thing guaranteed to us is death.’ He would know.”

Earlier shooting

A ballistics analysis of a 9mm Luger handgun that investigators recovered at the scene was linked to a shooting in the parking lot of a store on East Fourth Street in St. Paul about four hours before Carter’s killing.

Surveillance video from the store and area shows a Nissan Altima that appeared to be similar to the suspect’s vehicle from the homicide pull up. The rear passenger door opens, an arm is extended and fires in the direction of a vehicle in the parking lot.

Surveillance video from a Holiday gas station on Rice Street around 7:15 p.m. shows the same Nissan Altima drive up and a passenger enter the store and pay for gas. Police identified him as Pruitt and the driver of the car as Davis, according to the complaints.

Williams, Davis and Pruitt were charged the following month with aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder in Carter’s killing. They were indicted the following July.

Husten during an August 2022 interview with police admitted to firing three to four shots at Carter’s front door, Lamin told jurors Thursday.

Frogtown fatal shooting

Just over a month after Carter’s killing, Williams allegedly fatally shot 31-year-old Regis Jones in an alley in St. Paul’s Frogtown neighborhood, according to a complaint in that case charging him with second-degree murder.

A homicide investigation was underway March 4, 2022, in the 600 block of Blair Avenue in St. Paul. (Courtesy of the St. Paul Police Department)

“Police believe that Williams murdered (Jones) to keep him from talking about the murder of (Carter),” a 2022 complaint against Williams’ cousin, Dovyion Daquay Glass, says. Glass, 34, of Roseville, pleaded guilty to being an accomplice after the fact in Jones’ homicide and was sentenced in June 2023 to just over 7½ years in prison.

Williams has pleaded not guilty in that case, which is ongoing.

At the time of both murders, Williams was wanted by police for absconding from his Nov. 10 supervised release from Minnesota Correctional Facility-St. Cloud relating to June 2018 convictions in two nonfatal shootings that year.

Jail conduct

Christine Lynn Satriano, 54, of St. Paul. (Courtesy of the Dakota County Sheriff’s Office)

Lamin told jurors during closing arguments that Williams’ cover-up continued in 2022 at the Ramsey County jail, where he was being held in the murders of Carter and Jones.

Williams engaged in a sexual relationship with jail medical assistant Christine Lynn Satriano through explicit phone calls and letters and used her to spread word throughout the jail that a co-defendant was “talking” to police and prosecutors about Carter’s killing, according to a criminal complaint filed against her in July 2022.

Satriano pleaded guilty to aiding an offender as an accomplice after the fact in October 2022 after reaching a deal with the prosecution. It calls for a stayed prison sentence for two years, during which time she will be on probation. She is scheduled to be sentenced Monday.