Second man charged with 2021 murder outside St. Paul Saloon

Mara H. Gottfried, Pioneer Press
·4 min read

A second man has been indicted for murder in the shooting of a 20-year-old two years ago in St. Paul, according to information made public this week.

Raymond Renteria-Hobbs was killed in February 2021 outside a bar in the Dayton’s Bluff area.

Andrew Vernard Glover, now 38, was charged in the days that followed Renteria-Hobbs’ death. He was later convicted of aiding and abetting intentional first-degree murder.

A grand jury indicted another man, Bobby Neal Cole Jr., in September 2021, charging him with aiding and abetting both first-degree premeditated murder and first-degree murder by drive-by shooting, along with other charges.

A warrant was issued and the case was under seal until Cole’s recent arrest.

Cole, 27, was in an Illinois correctional facility since last October for being a felon in possession of a firearm; he was brought from there to the Ramsey County jail earlier this week.

His attorney couldn’t be reached for comment Friday.

Just over a year before Cole allegedly took part in Renteria-Hobbs’ killing, he was sentenced in an armed robbery. The prosecution and victim sought prison time for Cole, but a judge sent him to the Ramsey County workhouse, with a prison sentence hanging over his head if he violated terms of his 10-year probation.

After leaving bar, shooting outside

Surveillance video showed Renteria-Hobbs entering the St. Paul Saloon on Hudson Road near Earl Street about 8 p.m. Feb. 23, 2021, according to the criminal complaint in Glover’s case.

A few minutes later, a vehicle pulled up. Two men got out and entered the bar. One wore a Chicago White Sox hat and greeted Renteria-Hobbs. The other man, later identified as Glover, didn’t greet Renteria-Hobbs, but they later talked.

Renteria-Hobbs followed the man in the Sox hat out the front door. Renteria-Hobbs walked toward the driver’s side of Glover’s vehicle as the man in the Sox hat went in the passenger side.

Surveillance footage showed a woman hide behind a truck as the shooting apparently began. She was wounded by gunfire and Renteria-Hobbs was killed.

Glover was sentenced in October to life in prison. His attorney said at the time that Glover has “continued to maintain his innocence that he didn’t pull the trigger.” Glover filed a notice of appeal in January.

Renteria-Hobbs’ mother wants other people to learn from the death of her son, said Miki Frost, founder of 8218 Truce Centers in St. Paul, who has been working with her.

“She doesn’t want people to hold any grudges for even the people involved,” Frost said Friday. “… She doesn’t want other parents or kids to have go through what her son went through and what she’s going through as a parent.”

Past armed robbery

In Cole’s past armed robbery, to which he pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting, he was in court in November 2019 for sentencing. Cole admitted to pointing a loaded gun at a woman during a robbery on a Green Line train in St. Paul.

In asking for probation, Cole’s attorney said he was particularly amenable to treatment and that he accepted responsibility for his actions in the case early on, according to a sentencing transcript, which the Pioneer Press obtained through a data practices act request.

The victim asked that Cole be sent to prison. She wrote in a statement read to the court that she tried to forgive and move on, but said the actions of Cole and his associates “left me feeling vulnerable and in complete fear while commuting to and from work.”

Cole told Judge George Stephenson: “I realized that I have took a piece of that person that day and I’m sorry.” He said he was interested in a treatment program to learn new techniques to control his drug habit and his mind.

A prosecutor argued for a prison sentence of six years and nine months. He said Cole already was on probation for felony threats of violence against his fiancée.

Stephenson sentenced Cole to six years and nine months, saying it was the highest he could under the state’s sentencing guidelines. He stayed the sentence for 10 years, for which he’d be on supervised probation.

“Probation is not going to be a cake walk for you,” Stephenson told Cole. “… You’re going to work your butt off. And you have no room, absolutely no room, to stumble.”

Stephenson sentenced Cole to a year in the workhouse. He told him he’d get a chemical dependency evaluation and would need to follow all recommendations, along with taking part in programming for cognitive skills, anger management and domestic abuse.

In June 2021, a probation officer wrote in a court filing that Cole’s whereabouts were unknown and his last contact with probation had been March 2021, the month after Renteria-Hobbs’ shooting. A warrant was issued for his arrest.

Last October, Judge DeAnne Hilgers put in place the six year and nine month sentence for the robbery, for which Cole will receive credit for time already served.

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