There was a lot of talk about choices when Joshua Hanes was sentenced Thursday for his role in the shooting death last summer of man near the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.
Hanes "made a choice to hang out with Antonio Thelen," who was convicted last month of second-degree murder in the death of Sean D. Gibbs, prosecutor Dan Vlieger said. Hanes "was in the wrong place at the wrong time," the prosecutor said, and initially made a choice to help conceal the crime.
But it was Hanes' testimony at Thelen's trial that helped the jury reach its guilty verdict, Vlieger added.
Hanes, 19, was given up to 20 years of probation with several conditions Thursday for his earlier guilty plea to aiding an offender after the fact. He had agreed to testify in exchange for being conditionally released until his sentencing.
Ramsey County District Judge J. Thomas Mott also stayed a 23-month sentence and gave Hanes credit for 226 days he has already served in jail.
Gibbs, 21, was fatally shot early Aug. 18. He and his girlfriend had driven by a house in the 200 block of Forbes Avenue in St. Paul, where Thelen and his friends were partying.
Hanes, who'd been hanging out with them all night, said he was asleep in the passenger seat of a friend's convertible when Thelen hopped in and followed the car Gibbs in which was riding.
Thelen and Gibbs exchanged angry words at a red light at Smith Avenue and Kellogg Boulevard. All three men got out of the vehicles and Gibbs was shot.
