Charges filed in 2015 St. Paul murder

A St. Paul man was charged Wednesday in the 2015 murder of a man found dead near Hazel Park Recreation Center.

Melvin Holmes Jr., 24, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with one count each of aiding and abetting second-degree murder, second-degree criminal sexual conduct and first-degree robbery.

The charges did not specify his role in the Sept. 29 fatal shooting of Jerome E. Hall Jr., 25, but indicated that he sexually assaulted a woman who was with Hall that night.

According to the complaint: Hall and a female companion were in the park when two men appeared. One man stood in front of the woman, grabbed her sweatshirt and head and threw her to the ground. The second man knocked Hall to the ground.

The first man hit the woman in the head, took her purse and grabbed her breasts over her shirt.

"Give me the gun! Give me the gun!" the man who assaulted Hall yelled to the man assaulting the woman.

The woman broke away from her attacker and fled, losing her shoes in the process. She suffered a scrape, cut and bump to her face and head.

Police found Hall at the park dead from a gunshot wound to the upper chest and a gunshot wound to the nose.

In January 2016, police spoke to a man whose marijuana dealer had been robbed in November 2014, the complaint said. The man told police that he saw Holmes and a man known as "Shaq" that day, and warned his dealer that they were "street robbers."

The dealer later told the man that Holmes and "Shaq" robbed him at gunpoint.

In February, police spoke to "Shaq," who told them that Holmes had put the gun to the dealer's head, robbed him and then shot at the dealer when the dealer chased after them.

According to the charges, the three casings recovered from the 2014 robbery were fired from the same gun used to kill Hall.

Tests later showed that Holmes could not be excluded as a contributor to DNA found on the sweatshirt that Hall's female companion was wearing, but that 99.7 percent of the general population could be excluded.

Holmes was charged via arrest warrant. No other suspects have been charged in Hall's death.