A Saint Paul man is charged with attempted second-degree murder after he allegedly shot another man while he drove through an alley near a bar on the city’s East Side last month.
Paul David Garay, 46, faces two additional felony charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon. He’s being held on $1 million bail.
According to the criminal complaint, the victim arrived at Regions Hospital around 12:45 a.m. Saturday, March 21, with a gunshot wound to his left armpit area.
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The victim told investigators he had been shot near the Cherry Pit bar while driving his Jeep Cherokee through a nearby alley. He said he was in the alley to meet a friend and described the shooter as bald and wearing a hoodie. A woman who is Garay’s ex-girlfriend was a passenger in the Cherokee.
The woman told investigators she and the victim had driven around after leaving a bar. They drove slowly down an alley north of Minnehaha Avenue and west of Flandrau Street when someone approached the driver’s side and shot through the rear window, the complaint says. The victim told her he had been shot, stopped driving and had a friend take them to the hospital in a separate vehicle.
Investigators found the Cherokee with its rear driver’s side window shattered. A spent .40-caliber casing was recovered in the alley, 20 to 30 yards west of a driveway in the 1600 block of Minnehaha Avenue East. The shooting took place about a block east of the Cherry Pit.
The day before the shooting, at 6:59 a.m. Friday, March 20, Garay had sent the victim a threatening message that read in part, “Listen im not going to just go away so either you come see me on your own or im going to continue having as many people as possible keep looking for your whereabouts and dropping in on every spot i find of both of you until i get my issue resolved.”
Several days after the shooting, the victim contacted investigators and said Garay was trying to find and kill him, the complaint says.
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Surveillance video from the Cherry Pit showed a bald man with a goatee wearing a blue hooded sweatshirt with stripes down the sleeves walking around near the bar with his hands in his sweatshirt pockets around 12:08 a.m. The man looked at cars in the nearby parking lots. Alley surveillance captured a person running after the Cherokee before turning around and running back seconds later.
Garay’s own home surveillance video, recovered during a search of his residence, showed him wearing a blue sweatshirt with darker stripes down the sleeves at 4:46 p.m. on March 20. The video also showed him getting into a green Chevrolet outside his residence around 10:30 p.m. that evening, the complaint states.
Garay was arrested Saturday, April 4, outside his residence. A blue hooded sweatshirt similar to the one worn by the man near the Cherry Pit was found in his Cadillac DTS, which was parked nearby. Phone records obtained from Verizon on April 15 placed Garay’s phone at the Cherry Pit and at the shooting location around the time of the incident.
Garay declined to give a statement to investigators.
He has prior felony convictions for second-degree controlled substance crime, being a felon in possession of a firearm and first-degree burglary. The burglary conviction, out of Dakota County in 2013, involved Garay forcing entry into an ex-girlfriend’s residence and pouring gasoline on the floor while the ex-girlfriend’s roommate and the roommate’s 6-year-old child were present. He was sentenced to 67 months in prison.
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At the time of the shooting, Garay was facing felony charges in three separate jurisdictions. In Hennepin County, he was charged with first-degree drug sale involving 17 grams or more of methamphetamine or cocaine, first-degree drug possession, being a felon in possession of a firearm and committing a crime while wearing a bullet-resistant vest.
In Ramsey County, he was charged with first-degree drug possession after investigators found about seven pounds of methamphetamine in the center console of a stolen pickup truck he was driving. He was also charged federally with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, possession of methamphetamine and possessing firearms in furtherance of drug trafficking.
Garay was on federal conditional release at the time of the shooting, with a condition that he not possess firearms, according to court documents.
