The victim of an attempted robbery in St. Paul took action when one of the robbers pointed a gun at him, firing his own gun and wounding one of the robbers.
One of the robbers simultaneously fired in the direction of the victim, who was not hurt, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday.
The Ramsey County attorney’s office charged one of the robbery suspects, Marcel Lee Galloway, with aiding and abetting first-degree aggravated robbery and first-degree attempted aggravated robbery, along with second-degree assault. Galloway, 21, of St. Paul, was shot in the leg during the incident.
The county attorney’s office is not considering charges against the man who shot Galloway because he was acting in self-defense, said spokesman Dennis Gerhardstein.
The criminal complaint gives the following account:
Two men, identified in the complaint by their initials, VT and TG, got off work Sunday in downtown Minneapolis, where they are bouncers. They took their paychecks to the Unbank at 1098 W. University Ave. in St. Paul, parking on Aurora Avenue, cashed their checks about 3:20 a.m. and returned to TG’s car.
VT, who is 31, saw two males approaching them as he walked to the passenger side of the car and heard the sound of a gun racking a round. A man in a baseball cap, later identified as Galloway, pointed a gun at VT and told him not to move. VT told TG, who is 26, not to move because he feared they would be shot if they did.
When VT looked again, the man with Galloway had the handgun and approached TG on the driver’s side. The robber, wearing a stocking cap, went into the car and robbed TG of the $160 he’d just received from cashing his check.
While TG was being robbed, VT “surreptitiously removed his wallet from his pocket and slid it between the passenger seat and the door jamb,” the complaint said. The man with the stocking cap then pointed the gun at VT and demanded money.
“VT told the men he didn’t carry money because he bounces in a bar,” the complaint said. Galloway searched his pockets. Finding nothing, the other robber “gave VT a look of disgust and disbelief” and the two robbers backed away from the car, the complaint said.
“VT was afraid that he and TG were going to be shot” and reached under the passenger seat to grab his Sig Sauer P250 .45-caliber handgun, which he has a permit to carry, the complaint said. “VT feared the two men didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t have any money, and he was afraid they might come back.”
The robbers crossed into a Dairy Queen parking lot and the man in the stocking cap raised his handgun and pointed it toward TG and VT.
VT then fired at the robbers, the complaint said, and the man in the stocking cap simultaneously fired once in VT’s direction. VT fired five times and his second shot struck Galloway.
The man in the stocking cap fled, and VT and TG called 911. Shortly afterward, dispatch received a call about a man who said his relative reported having been shot near the Dairy Queen. The man had searched the area but couldn’t find his relative.
An officer went to the area and his police dog alerted him to a fenced area of the O’Reilly Auto Parts store. The officer called out a warning about the dog and heard a man scream: “OK, OK, I’m coming out. Don’t send the dog in here,” the complaint said.
Galloway crawled out of his hiding place and was found to have a gunshot wound to his leg. Paramedics took him to the hospital.
Galloway later told police he’d run into an acquaintance he knew as “Savage” and they walked around looking for someone to rob. They saw two men getting into a parked car and approached “to rob them and it got ugly,” he said, according to the complaint.
Galloway said he saw “Savage” rob the men with a gun but hadn’t known before then that the man was armed. He said he stood by the trunk while “Savage” did the robbery. He also said he was shot by one of the men when he and “Savage” fled, and “Savage just took off and left Galloway after he had been shot.”
St. Paul police are following leads on the second suspect, said spokesman Sgt. Paul Paulos.
Mara H. Gottfried can be reached at 651-228-5262. Follow her at twitter.com/MaraGottfried or twitter.com/ppUsualSuspects.
