A 44-year-old man with a violent criminal history was charged Tuesday with shooting a woman in St. Paul and implicated in gunfire several hours earlier in Minneapolis.
Antoine L. Powell, 44, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with second-degree intentional murder in connection with the shooting on Sept. 3 that killed Anna Marie Wagener, 41, of St. Paul, and severely wounded another woman.
Powell, of St. Paul, is currently in the Hennepin County jail on a weapons-related charge filed in October 2019.
Neither police nor prosecutors have offered a motive for the shooting. Investigators said at the time that they believed that the suspect and victim knew each other.
According to the complaint:
Police officers arrived at Arcade Street and E. Cook Avenue shortly before 3:40 a.m. and saw Wagener with gunshot wounds to her chest and leg. She died at the scene. An autopsy found that she had been shot six times.
The officers learned that missing were her cellphone and her handgun. She had recently obtained a government-issued permit to carry a firearm and the gun "because the area where she lived wasn't safe," the charging document read.
A resident nearby told police about seeing the gunman shoot Wagener as she moved backward from him. The shooter then grabbed something from Wagener and ran.
