Man pleads guilty to fatal shooting in parking lot

Published 10:03 am Monday, September 22, 2014

ST. PAUL — A man who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting a woman in St. Paul this summer said he only fired after she sideswiped him with her car, and he didn’t mean to aim at her.

Thirty year-old DeMarcus Barnett pleaded guilty Friday to second-degree unintentional murder.

He acknowledged shooting 22-year-old British Autavia Morris-Rice on July 19.

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He said a man was being abusive to her at a bar so he intervened with the man while she drove away. He said she sideswiped him so he tensed up and fired even though “she didn’t have nothin’ to do with nothin’.”

Prosecutors said surveillance footage shows a scuffle, followed by Barnett aiming at her car and approaching when it passed within several feet of him.