The armed robber shot by a clerk during a 2017 robbery of a Verizon store in Inver Grove Heights was sentenced this week to 15 years in prison.
Jamaal Marquie Mays, 34, of Crystal, pleaded guilty this past fall to charges of armed robbery and discharging a firearm during a crime. On Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge John Tunheim sentenced him to 15 years in federal prison and five years of supervised release.
Mays’ accomplice, Jaquon Keshawn Moman, 26, was sentenced in January to six years in prison on the same charges for the robbery, which ended in a shootout at a busy strip mall. One of the bullets grazed an employee of a nearby restaurant.
“Such brazen acts of violence will not be tolerated in our communities,” U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald said in a prepared statement announcing Mays’ sentence.
‘MAKE IT EASY ON ME’
Mays and Moman entered the Verizon Wireless store at about 11 a.m. on August 17, 2017, and pretended to browse until customers left, according to court documents. That is when they approached the store’s employee asking about phones stored in a back room.
After retrieving several phones, the employee was met by Mays pointing a .45 caliber semi-automatic pistol at his head, court records said.
“Make it easy on me,” Mays told the employee and demanded cellphones and cash.
SHOTS RING OUT
The store’s clerk had his own idea, and his own gun.
As the employee pretended to comply, he drew a licensed firearm and fired three times in self-defense — striking Mays twice. Mays shot back, but missed and fell to the ground wounded.
A stray bullet from the shootout pierced a wall before grazing the lower back of a worker at the adjacent Super Wok restaurant. She was treated at a local clinic.
Mays was critically injured and spent several days at Regions Hospital in St. Paul.
Moman ran away but investigators later arrested him.