Only months before Lavauntai Broadbent, 16, was shot and killed on a St. Paul river bluff during a botched robbery, authorities say he was part of a violent mob of teens that led a rumble in a downtown St. Paul hotel.
Broadbent, of West St. Paul, died late Friday at Shadow Falls Park when one of the two adults he was threatening at gunpoint drew his own gun — for which he had a permit to carry — and fired, after he and three other juvenile males demanded "items." Broadbent was wearing a mask and gloves, police said.
Police spokesman Steve Linders said Tuesday that authorities had no new information to disclose about the Broadbent case.
He did confirm that on Sunday night, a car drove off the street just before midnight into Shadow Falls Park, where some people had gathered for a vigil for Broadbent. Shots were fired, and the suspects fled on foot because their vehicle had struck a concrete planter. It's unclear where the shots were fired from, Linders said, but no one was hit.
Four men and a juvenile male were later arrested in connection with the Sunday shooting, which remains under investigation.
Broadbent was a young man caught up in a culture of gang violence, according to court documents from an April 18 fight at the Embassy Suites Hotel in downtown St. Paul. Details from the hotel fight, along with information released about Broadbent's death and St. Paul's youth gang culture, show that easy answers are difficult to come by and that many of St. Paul's young men are swept up in a tit-for-tat cycle of retribution.
"At one point, [Broadbent] is observed kicking someone on the ground and chases another person off camera … [and] saw a guy who had jumped him about a month ago," said the criminal complaint in the hotel fight.
Broadbent pleaded guilty in May to third-degree riot in a gang-related fight among 50 to 100 juveniles at the Embassy Suites in which members of the Ham Crazy and Everybody Killer gangs fought with members of the Shoota Boy Gang. He was sentenced in May to a year of supervised probation.
