MINNEAPOLIS – A Minneapolis man who was just months past his 18th birthday when he committed several armed carjackings has been sentenced to 12.5 years in federal prison.
Shamir Nathann Black, now 19, was sentenced this week in federal court to 151 months in prison for violently carjacking a woman outside her place of work in Northeast Minneapolis last June. Black also admitted his involvement in two additional armed carjackings in Golden Valley last spring.
Alpha News first reported with exclusive video the carjacking that took place just after 4 p.m. on June 9 outside Tony Jaros River Garden bar in the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District.
The security camera footage showed the victim approaching her car when one of two men approached her with a gun. She shut the door before he could get inside. The suspect, identified in the criminal complaint as Black, demanded the keys to her Audi but she refused.
The suspect then threw her to the ground in the parking lot, cocked the gun, beat her and pistol-whipped her across the head. The suspect’s accomplice then walked over and joined in the altercation. That’s when the bar’s cook just happened to be outside on a smoke break and heard the commotion and came to her rescue. They were joined by another group of men from the bar, as well as another man who pulled up in a pickup truck to help.
Dispatch audio at the time of the incident stated that a possible shot had been fired before the two suspects fled from the scene at Lowry Avenue Northeast and Marshall Street Northeast. The criminal complaint in the case states that as one of the men tried to pull Black off the victim, Black discharged a firearm toward the man.
The firearm which had been ditched by Black while fleeing in a wooded area was recovered by police and was later determined to have been stolen in Prior Lake.
Black was arrested about three weeks after the Northeast Minneapolis carjacking. At the time of his arrest, police also found a vehicle in Black’s driveway that had been stolen from Prior Lake during a burglary the same night as the gun was stolen.
Black was swiftly transferred to federal custody following his arrest and was charged in federal court. About a month prior to the carjacking at Tony Jaros’, U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Andrew Luger had announced a crackdown on perpetrators of violent crimes that had been plaguing the Twin Cities since the George Floyd riots in May 2020. At the time, Luger vowed to charge anyone over the age of 18 in federal court if they were involved in carjackings.
At Black’s plea hearing in September, he pleaded guilty to one count of carjacking and admitted to two other armed carjackings that took place in Golden Valley on May 16 and May 19. Charges say Black also used a gun in those crimes, and in one incident he racked the slide and put the gun to the victim’s head while demanding the keys.
Black will be required to serve a minimum of 85% of his federal sentence incarcerated which will be followed by three years of supervised release.
Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
This article originally appeared at Alpha News.
