Gun Found in Minneapolis Tied To Deadly St. Cloud Shooting

Nov 1

A St. Cloud man has been charged in connection with a 2023 house party shooting that left one man dead and two others injured.

According to a criminal complaint filed Friday, 27-year-old Kelisha Jason Walton II is charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder with intent for the Oct. 22, 2023, shooting on the 700 block of 6th Avenue South in St. Cloud.

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Officers from St. Cloud and Sartell police, along with Stearns County deputies and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, responded just before 4 a.m. after reports of gunfire and multiple people shot. Police found 34-year-old Antonio Carl Harris Jr. on the ground receiving CPR and took over lifesaving efforts, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The Midwest Medical Examiner’s Office ruled Harris’s death a homicide, noting multiple gunshot wounds to the head, trunk and extremities. Two other people were also struck by gunfire: one in the leg and another in the foot.

Investigators say the shooting was retaliation for a stabbing several months earlier. One of the men involved in that previous incident, Deionte Jaewon Parker, was convicted by a jury in March of aiding and abetting the same killing. Walton is Parker’s relative.

Surveillance footage showed Parker, Walton and another person traveling together in a white Ford Taurus between the Red Carpet nightclub and Go For It Gas in St. Cloud before the shooting. Around 2:46 a.m., video from the gas station captured Walton walking toward the pumps with what appeared to be an extended firearm magazine tucked in his waistband.

Witnesses told police that tensions at the house party escalated when Parker pointed a gun at one of the men involved in the earlier stabbing, with Walton standing beside him. Moments later, gunfire broke out outside the home. Several witnesses identified Parker as one of the shooters and reported hearing more than one firearm.

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A Ring camera recorded a man matching Walton’s description running from the scene around 3:54 a.m., appearing to cough and place a handgun into his sweatshirt pocket.

Forensic testing by the BCA later confirmed that eighteen .40-caliber casings and four bullets recovered from Harris’s body were fired from a Glock handgun registered to Walton. That firearm was found months later in a vacant yard in Minneapolis and phone data showed Walton’s device in the area two days after the homicide.

Walton remains in custody following his arrest. If convicted, he faces up to 40 years in prison for aiding and abetting second-degree murder.

Parker was sentenced in April to 40 years in prison for his role in the killing.

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