Suspect in killing of pregnant woman, her child in Rochester is shot by police in S.C.

A man suspected of killing his pregnant girlfriend and her 2-year-old daughter last week in their Rochester home went to South Carolina intent on killing another woman but was shot by police at a hotel while armed with a BB rifle, authorities said Monday.

Rochester police identified the two people found dead Sunday as 23-year-old Keona S. Foote and Miyona Z. Miller.

Renard L. Carter, 29, of Rochester, was charged Monday in Olmsted County District Court with two counts of second-degree murder and murder of an unborn child. Authorities say he is not the father of the 2-year-old.

Carter posted videos on social media that appeared to depict him killing Foote, according to the charges. One video includes a voice, presumably Carter's, saying, "All you got do is just die," the charges continued.

Another video zooms in on Foote's face, while still another shows Carter standing over her body and combing his hair and saying " … get fresh like nothing happened."

Rochester police Lt. Tom Faudskar said that Foote was in the first trimester of her pregnancy when she was killed. Police have yet to say whether he was the father of the unborn child.

Law enforcement in South Carolina acting on a tip that Carter went south to kill an ex-girlfriend found him about 10 p.m. Sunday in a room at the Aloft Columbia Harbison Hotel, said Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott.

Carter was "making threats through the door to the officers outside the room that he had … a rifle and he was going to shoot them," Lott said at a news conference Monday.

The sheriff said Carter opened the door "with the gun in his hand," and three officers hit him with multiple gunshots.

"We are very fortunate that none of the officers were injured," Lott said.

The charges in Minnesota said that Carter opened a live video feed on social media while holding the rifle and that he wanted to be killed by police.

Carter remains hospitalized under guard, and his condition has not been disclosed.

"We are still trying to determine his official condition," Rochester's Faudskar said. "Whether it's critical or serious, we don't know at this point."

Foote's family members, concerned they had not heard from her lately, went to her apartment Sunday afternoon in the 400 block of NE. 31st Street and saw that the 2-year-old girl was dead, police said.

That's when relatives alerted authorities, who arrived and found Foote's body as well.

According to the charges:

The girl's body was on the floor in the master bedroom. Her mother's body was in the connecting bathroom, with a cellphone cord pulled around her neck. They had been dead since Thursday.

Carter had been living with Foote and the girl at the apartment for the past month.

A witness told police that Carter sent a message in recent days saying he was going to kill the mothers of each of his children.

A second witness told an investigator that Carter said he intended to kill Foote, her unborn child and her daughter, along with a previous partner in South Carolina if that person prevented him from seeing his children.

Carter has a criminal history in Minnesota dating to 2009 that includes convictions for illicit drugs, forgery, fleeing police, failure to pay child support, property damage, domestic assault and violating a domestic no-contact order.

He was released from prison in April after being incarcerated in connection with the domestic assault case, court records show.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482