A man has received a 30-year term for a gun battle on a St. Paul street that killed a former St. Paul Central High School basketball star.
Xavion T. Bell, of St. Paul, was sentenced Monday in Ramsey County District Court after pleading guilty to second-degree intentional murder in connection with the death of Dion Lamarr Ford Jr., 21, on March 31, 2022, outside a grocery store in the North End.
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Bell is expected to serve nearly 19 years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
In February 2019 as a senior, Ford recorded his 1,000th career point at Central while scoring a game-high 18 points during his team's victory over St. Paul's Johnson Senior High School. "Only the greatest can get it, so I'm really proud," he told the Star Tribune.
Ford later attended Casper (Wyo.) College, where he played basketball in 2020-21. At the time of his death, Ford was attending Augsburg University in Minneapolis on an academic scholarship.
According to the criminal complaint:
Police were called to the Maryland Supermarket around 9:15 p.m. and found Ford down in the intersection of Arundel Street and Maryland Avenue with a gunshot wound to the head and "a handgun partially in his hand." He was pronounced dead at the scene.
Spent shell casings surrounded Ford, who had a permit in his wallet to carry the firearm. Police said 911 callers heard as many as 40 gunshots.