ST. CLOUD - A Sherburne County judge sentenced a 44-year-old St. Cloud man to 20 years in prison for killing a man and dumping the body by St. Cloud Regional Airport in November 2020.

Ricco D. Tyson was charged with one felony count of second-degree murder and two felony manslaughter counts in December 2020.

In June, Tyson pleaded guilty to one felony count of second-degree murder as part of a plea deal that dropped the two manslaughter counts. On Thursday, Judge Walter Kaminsky sentenced Tyson to 240 months with credit for time served.

According to the criminal complaint filed against Tyson, the sheriff's office responded to a report of a dead body near 55th Avenue and 10th Street SE., just east of St. Cloud, on Nov. 14, 2020.

The body was later identified as 25-year-old Tyler Ecklund. A medical examiner listed the cause of death as a gunshot wound to the head and listed the manner of death as a homicide.

Investigators learned Ecklund sometimes stayed at a residence on the southeast side of St. Cloud; while searching the home, officers found blood in a detached garage.

A woman at the residence said Ecklund borrowed her vehicle but she didn't know where it was; the vehicle was later found after Minneapolis police issued a parking citation for the vehicle near an address associated with Tyson, the complaint states.

Tyson was arrested in December 2020 on a different matter in Wright County. He told investigators he struck Ecklund in the head with a handgun during an argument inside a vehicle in St. Cloud. He said as he struck him with his gun a third time, it fired, the complaint states.

Tyson told officials he dumped the body near a site where he had previously camped and threw the gun into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis.