Second person charged in Mpls. murder-for-hire plot

Hennepin County prosecutors on Wednesday charged a second person in a murder-for-hire scheme that ended with the nonfatal shooting of a man and a woman in northeast Minneapolis last month.

Deontae Jackson, 28, was charged with the Dec. 19 drive-by shooting, although a criminal complaint filed in Hennepin County District court identified him as the driver of the suspect vehicle and not one of the alleged shooters.

He remained jailed Wednesday afternoon in lieu of $500,000 bail and is scheduled to go before a judge Thursday afternoon.

Jackson was the second person charged in the crime; police said their investigation has produced at least three other suspects, none of whom has been charged.

Chelsey Majors, 26, of New Brighton, whom authorities identified as the plot's mastermind, was arrested last month and charged with aiding and abetting a drive-by shooting.

The incident happened at 11:24 p.m. Dec. 19 in the 1200 block of Buchanan Street in northeast Minneapolis, according to a criminal complaint.

Prosecutors say that Majors persuaded the four men, who like Jackson are thought to be affiliated with the 1-9 Block Dipset gang, to carry out the hit on her former boyfriend, after the two had an "acrimonious and violent" breakup.

After spotting his car at a northeast Minneapolis gas station, Majors called in the hit, police said. The carful of gunmen caught up with the victim's car minutes later and pumped at least 25 rounds into it, striking the man and a woman he was with multiple times, according to police.

The man and the woman, who was pregnant, both survived the attack, authorities said, but the woman lost her fetus when she was shot.

Two days after the shooting, police arrested one of the suspected gunmen, a 27-year-old St. Paul man, and charged him with being a felon in possession of a firearm after officers found a handgun with an extended magazine in the car he was riding in, court filings show. The man hasn't yet been charged.

According to court documents, Jackson, who also has ties to the Bogus Boys gang, was believed to have been the target of a shooting last summer that killed Crystal Collins. The single mother of three was struck by an errant bullet while hanging out with a group of people near her home in the 3000 block of Newton Avenue N.

Detectives heard from sources on the street that the shooting may have been in retaliation for an earlier attack involving Jackson, who was grazed in the back of the head by a bullet.