A Saint Paul man has been charged with murder in a 2022 shooting that killed a man outside a Saint Paul bar — nearly four years after the gunfire.
Romello Markell Ifonlaja-Randle, 26, of Saint Paul, was charged with second-degree murder in Ramsey County District Court on May 14, 2026.
According to the complaint, officers were called shortly before 10:00 p.m. on August 31, 2022, to a shooting across from Born’s Bar on Manitoba Avenue. Multiple 911 callers reported hearing 40 to 50 gunshots, and one said it sounded like automatic gunfire. Officers found a man face down on the sidewalk with a gunshot wound to his head; medics pronounced him dead at the scene at 10:09 p.m.
Investigators determined the victim had been standing with a group on the sidewalk near a parked vehicle around 9:55 p.m. when two people opened fire on them from a nearby alley. After the gunfire stopped, a man from the victim’s group pulled a handgun and returned fire down the alley — an estimated 20 to 30 rounds — before getting back into the vehicle, which sped away.
Officers recovered spent casings from two separate positions: roughly 29 where the return fire came from, and a second cluster in the alley — eight .357-caliber and three .45-caliber casings — at the spot the attackers had fired from. Investigators traced a direct line of fire from the alley to where the victim was standing when he was killed.
Surveillance video showed a dark SUV back into the alley behind a nearby building, then two people walk to a garage, wait briefly, enter the alley and each fire at the victim before running back to the SUV and fleeing. The vehicle, which had chrome trim and large spoked rims, was later identified as a Jeep Grand Cherokee. A witness also reported seeing a man get into a dark SUV with a partial license plate right after the shooting, and investigators cited a social-media comment that referenced a person by the nickname “Melly.”
The break came weeks later. On September 22, 2022, during an unrelated burglary investigation, officers found a Jeep Grand Cherokee matching the one from the shooting at a Saint Paul address and recovered a Glock .45-caliber handgun from a studio at that location, where Ifonlaja-Randle was present. Ballistics testing determined the Glock had fired the three .45-caliber casings found in the alley.
Prosecutors did not bring charges until May 2026. Ifonlaja-Randle is in custody. If convicted of second-degree murder, he faces up to 40 years in prison.
