St. Paul beating defendant gets prison

Although his attorney pleaded for leniency, Ahmed Farah Hirsi, the last of four defendants convicted in the brutal baseball-bat beating of a good Samaritan last spring was sent to prison Tuesday for 3 1/2 years.

Hirsi, 22, of St. Paul, told Ramsey County District Judge Joanne Smith that he didn't know that the other men planned to beat up Edwin Daniel and insisted that he didn't participate in the assault.

"I never hurt anyone before and I never will hurt anyone ever," he said.

But Daniel told the judge that not only did Hirsi participate in the assault, he was an instigator of it.

Daniel, 40, was attacked by five men in the early morning hours of May 25 at the SuperAmerica station at Wall and E. 7th streets in downtown St. Paul. He was a shuttle driver for the Crowne Plaza Hotel in St. Paul and often stopped at the station to refuel. Five days before the assault, Daniel had defended a clerk at the station who was being harassed by a group of men.

Three of the four defendants in the beating: Hirsi; Abdiaziz Hirsi, 22, of Minneapolis, and Ibrahim Abdullahi, 22, of St. Paul, were sentenced to 42 months, double what is called for by state guidelines. Zakaria Yusuf, 21, of St. Paul, was sentenced to six months in jail. Police still are looking for a fifth man, whom the other defendants have refused to name.

Gary Wolf, Hirsi's attorney, reiterated to the judge Tuesday that Hirsi was "not an attacker" and "did not have a bat." He did his best to try to stop the other men from attacking Daniel, Wolf said, and feels guilty that he couldn't do more. That's why he entered an Alford plea to the charge of aiding and abetting second-degree assault.

"These guys beat me till I was almost dead," he said. "They thought I was dead. They're getting off easy. It should be attempted murder."

Smith didn't buy Hirsi's claims of innocence. She noted that Hirsi has convictions as a juvenile for theft, domestic assault and criminal damage to property.

"I do not lightly send young people to prison," the judge said. "Prison can be a rather stark place and sometimes people come out worse than they went in." But prison "is clearly warranted in this case," she said.