Blog

Mar 16, 2024

Last Cooper Avenue Murder Defendant Sentenced

ST. CLOUD ( WJON News ) -- The last of four defendants charged in the June 2021 murder of a woman in south St. Cloud has been sentenced. Thirty-five-year-old Angela Jones has also been sentenced for

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- The last of four defendants charged in the June 2021 murder of a woman in south St. Cloud has been sentenced.

Thirty-five-year-old Angela Jones has also been sentenced for the murder of another woman in a north St. Cloud apartment weeks earlier. Jones pleaded guilty to 2nd-degree murder in the shooting death of Janessa Harris in May 2021. She was sentenced to 25 years in prison for that crime.

Jones also pleaded guilty to felony aiding an offender after-the-fact in the shooting death of 25-year-old Keisa Lange of Litchfield just weeks later. Jones was sentenced to 12 years and two months in that case.

A judge ruled that the sentences will be served concurrently. Jones also gets credit for having already served more than two years in jail.

A Stearns County jury convicted 25-year-old DeAntae Davis on 1st-degree premeditated murder and other murder charges in Lange's death. He was sentenced to life in prison for the Lange murder.

Two other defendants in that murder have had their cases adjudicated. Twenty-eight-year-old Kenneth Carter was acquitted of all charges by a Stearns County jury, while 38-year-old Alicia Lewis pleaded guilty to a lesser charge.

Court records alleged Lange was murdered because the defendants thought she was a police informant. Her body was found at the end of Cooper Avenue South in St. Cloud on June 3, 2021.

Harris's body was found in a St. Cloud apartment unit in the 1400 block of 12th Avenue North on June 2nd, 2021. Court records indicate she was killed on or about May 31st.