St. Cloud woman sentenced to 25 years in prison for 2021 murder

A St. Cloud woman was sentenced Friday to 25 years in prison for the shooting death of Janesa Lashay Harris, 28, who was found dead in her apartment in the summer of 2021.

The sentence was one of three handed down for Angela Renee Jones, 35, who also pleaded guilty to taking part in a second murder a day or two after Harris' death and to running a prostitution scheme from behind bars. Jones has been in custody since shortly after the murders.

According to a release issued Friday by the Stearns County Attorney's Office, Harris had taken care of Jones and her children, but Jones had decided she didn't want Harris in her life. During an argument at Harris' apartment late on June 1 or early on June 2, Jones shot Harris once in the head.

On June 3, Jones was in a car with Keisa M. Lange, 25, and several others when Lange was shot in the head and left on the side of a road in St. Cloud. Jones later told authorities that DeAntae D. Davis, a 25-year-old St. Cloud man, fired the gun, but that she helped clean up evidence. Davis was sentenced last month to life in prison. Jones was sentenced Friday to 146 months on a felony conviction of aiding an offender after the fact.

Jones was also sentenced to 131 month in prison for promotion of prostitution after it was learned that, while she was in the Wright County Jail this year, she convinced a fellow inmate to provide sexual favors to Jones' husband in exchange for cash and use of his van. The three sentences will run concurrently.

In June, Jones entered guilty pleas in all three crimes. She said she had promoted prostitution; she said she was seated in the back seat of a car with Lange when Davis shot her. In Harris' murder, Jones entered an Alford plea of guilty to second-degree murder.