Gunman in killing of Alex Becker as he walked home in St. Paul gets 30-year prison sentence

Mara H. Gottfried, Pioneer Press
Updated ·6 min read

As a judge sentenced a man Monday for fatally shooting a 21-year-old as he walked to his St. Paul home from work, she said she knew no punishment would ever be enough to bring back Alex Becker.

Arteze Owen Kinerd, now 21, admitted in February to being in a group that selected Becker at random to rob in the North End in 2022.

Kinerd is the last person to be sentenced in the case. The prosecution and Kinerd’s attorneys had agreed to a prison term that would fall on the low end of state sentencing guidelines, which Ramsey County District Judge Nicole Starr said Monday she was bound by. She sentenced him to a 30-year prison term.

After Becker’s family remembered him in victim impact statements and talked about the trauma of his violent killing, Starr asked Kinerd, “Is there anything you would like to tell me?”

“No, your honor,” he replied.

Becker’s family has often discussed the young man’s kindness and Starr read part a poem called “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.

“Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing,” Starr read. “… It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.”

The judge followed up, speaking in her own words: “I know this family is going to carry Alex wherever you go. And I am sorry that the justice system cannot give you your son, friend, nephew, cousin back.”

Addressing Kinerd, Starr said, “I am sorry that you … had the opportunity today to demonstrate just a little bit of what kindness means, to demonstrate that you get some sense of what this means outside of yourself.”

Kinerd’s sentence is 30 years and three months. Most of those convicted in Minnesota serve two-thirds of their sentences in prison and the remainder on supervised release in the community, and Kinerd has credit for nearly one year and a half years already served. He’ll be about 42 when he gets out of prison, Starr noted.

“You’ve heard from this family that you’ll have all the things Alex doesn’t get,” Starr said to Kinerd. “You’ll get to love, you might get to marry, maybe you’ll have kids. … Maybe you’ll even have grandkids someday. Maybe you’ll get to buy a car with your savings. … You’ll celebrate Christmas. … Maybe you’ll even, at some point, fully understand what sorrow means. Maybe you’ll learn, maybe you’ll see how deeply you’ve affected someone else. That you didn’t just steal a car or maybe two cars. … You didn’t just tried to rob somebody and it went wrong. You stole a whole future from a whole community of people.”

Remembered as ‘kind and gentle’

Becker was a “kind and gentle kid,” his father, Tim Becker, said in a victim impact statement during Monday’s sentencing. He was saving up to get his driver’s license so he could work on his post-secondary education.

He was a hard worker at Goodin Co., the Como Avenue heating and plumbing parts company, where his father also worked. Alex Becker was walking back to his family’s home after a 10-hour shift when he was attacked.

Becker was killed “for absolutely no reason,” said his mother, Tara Becker. “… They ambushed him. They outnumbered him and Alex was unarmed. His murder cannot be justified in any manner.”

Alex Becker “took care of everyone in his life,” she said. “He was always there to listen to his friends, give them advice. He helped make his siblings’ lives happy.” His mother said he gave her “a reason to live and taught me the meaning of unconditional love.”

The loss of Becker has “broken me, it has broken my family,” Tara Becker said. “We all just force ourselves through each day.” She said her son will never be able to reach his dreams “because he is now just ashes on my shelf. The past year and a half has made me feel as though I were drowning. No matter how much air I gulp, I can never catch my breath.”

Tara Becker said she didn’t agree with the terms of Kinerd’s plea agreement.

“He should absolutely not face lesser time for this heinous murder,” she said. “He has a long history of hurting people and the only person he has shown care about is himself and he shouldn’t be free to hurt more people.”

Kinerd’s pre-sentence investigation noted his comments “showed a lack of understanding for the impact of his actions,” said Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Jessica Plotz.

But Kinerd’s attorney, Daniel Gonnerman, said “he has expressed regret and remorse for his actions. The fact that at this point he probably doesn’t fully recognize the severity of his actions is the result of his youth and immaturity.”

He was the only one of the three people charged “to accept responsibility” by pleading guilty, thus avoiding the trauma of another trial, Gonnerman said.

Admitted to shooting 8 times

On the evening of Dec. 27, 2022, Kinerd said he was a passenger in a car with two other people when they drove past Becker, whom he didn’t know. He said the driver pulled over and parked, and they waited until Kinerd got into an alley near Lawson Avenue and Kent Street.

Kinerd said during his guilty plea that he had a 9mm gun and he put Becker at gunpoint to rob him. Becker “snatched somebody else’s gun” from the group — a person who was standing in front of Becker and pointing the gun at him, Kinerd said. In response, Kinerd said he shot Becker eight times. To a prosecutor’s question, Kinerd agreed he shot Becker with the intention of killing him.

Kinerd also pleaded guilty at his February hearing to kidnapping a man on Dec. 9, 2022, in St. Paul’s Merriam Park during an armed robbery. He said he’d put the man “in the back seat at gunpoint” because he wanted to take his vehicle and everything he had, and they drove away with him in the vehicle. When a prosecutor asked how Kinerd had picked the man, he responded, “He was in a Porsche.”

Kinerd’s guilty pleas were to aiding and abetting intentional second-degree murder and kidnapping.

Federal prosecutors had notified Kinerd he was the target of prosecution in the kidnapping case and additional gun charges, but they’d agreed not to pursue charges if Kinerd was sentenced in Ramsey County court in accordance with the plea agreement, Gonnerman said when he pleaded guilty.

He will serve both sentences at the same time.

Jurors in December found Detwan Cortell Allen, 20, guilty of aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder in the killing of Becker. He received a sentence in April of 30 years and seven months.

The third man charged in the case, Shaun Lamar Travis, was acquitted in December. Travis waived his right to a jury trial and a bench trial was held instead. Ramsey County District Judge JaPaul Harris concluded there wasn’t a dispute about the 26-year-old Travis being present, but said the prosecution didn’t prove all of the elements of an intentional murder charge to find him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

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