Killer of beloved Minneapolis activist gets 20-year prison term

A longtime felon has been sentenced to a 20-year term for fatally shooting a Minneapolis entrepreneur and community activist.

Sid Strickland-Green III, 28, was sentenced Monday in connection with last spring's killing of 33-year-old Tyrone Williams.

Jurors convicted Strickland-Green last month of unintentional second-degree murder and acquitted him of the more serious count of intentional second-degree murder. With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Strickland-Green will serve the first 13 years in prison and the balance of his term on supervised release.

Prosecutor Dan Allard asked for the maximum 21-year term. Allard pointed out that Strickland-Green was convicted earlier of threatening his mother and a police officer, which meant he was not supposed to have a gun.

The defense argued for a term just shy of 15 years, the shortest amount of time under state guidelines.

District Judge William Koch handed down the sentence after listening to victim impact statements from Williams' family.

"He was in the process of changing our community," said Williams' uncle Sidney Nevils. "He was a rising star in the African-American community."

He returned to Minneapolis and began coaching youth football back at Powderhorn Park and turned to business, designing and selling streetwear for his Black Coalition Clothing company.

The father of four helped coordinate the 18-day occupation of Minneapolis' Fourth Precinct police station following the 2015 fatal shooting of Jamar Clark by an officer, and he was also the brother of former City Council candidate and NAACP activist Raeisha Williams.

Williams also traveled to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in North Dakota to protest the Dakota Access pipeline project. While there, he helped save a 15-year-old boy who fell in the river, his sister Kendra Pierson said in court. Tribal representatives draped Williams' coffin with a warrior quilt at his funeral, she said.

Prosecutors said the dispute between Williams and Strickland-Green began at the Red Dragon Restaurant on Lyndale Avenue S. days before the shooting. Williams was eating there with his girlfriend and others when Strickland-Green came into the restaurant, drunk and upset. He confronted Williams and asked him who had harassed him in the parking lot. Williams said he did not know and asked Strickland-Green to leave.

Late in the afternoon of April 3, Strickland-Green and a friend went to the home of Williams' mother near 8th and Elwood avenues N., where Williams came out and greeted them.