Former St. Paul rec center worker sentenced to 10 years for shooting teen in the head

A former St. Paul city worker was sentenced to more than a decade in prison Friday for shooting a teenager in the head last year outside a recreation center where he worked.

Exavir Binford, 27, who pleaded guilty to first-degree assault in December, was sentenced by Ramsey County District Judge Joy Bartscher to 10 years and five months and ordered to pay the teen’s family $34,000 in restitution.

Andrew Marshall, a lawyer representing the victim’s mother, Margarita Davison, said Binford’s actions permanently scarred the teen and his family.

The boy, who was 16 at the time, “has not been able to return to school. He is taking online classes, but he can only handle it part time,” Marshall told the court, relaying a victim impact statement from the teen’s family. “He really can’t go anywhere without his mother because she has to be able to administer emergency medication if he has a seizure.

“As a parent, Ms. Davison thought that [her son] going to the Jimmy Lee rec center after school was a good thing. She thought it was a safe environment. … The idea that the person running the rec center would try to harm her son was unimaginable.”

Binford could spend the last third of his sentence on supervised release if he remains on good behavior.

Police arrested Binford in January 2023 after a confrontation involving several teens escalated into a fight in the parking lot of the Jimmy Lee Rec Center on Lexington Pkwy. N. According to charging documents, Binford told investigators that he shot at the teens after they jumped him. He said he didn’t realize his bullet had struck the teenager until a moment later.

City leaders were quick to decry the incident, fired Binford and launched an audit of recreation center policies across St. Paul. That probe is continuing.

Davison has since sued the city for medical expenses and other damages related to her son’s traumatic brain injury. Her lawsuit in federal court alleges that officials knew of Binford’s troubled history with youth but did little about it.

According to the suit, Binford threatened to shoot a 17-year-old girl while working at the rec center in 2022 and punched a visitor multiple times while working at the Arlington Rec Center in 2019.

“Mr. Binford should never have been in a position where he was around kids,” Marshall, the mother’s attorney, told the court. “He should never be allowed to be in a position where he’s around kids in the future.

“The fact that [the teen] is alive is just luck. Mr. Binford tried to kill him. He shot Ms. Davison’s 16-year-old son in the head. It was not a mistake. He acted out of anger.”