A Howard Lake, Minn., man was sentenced this week to 15 years in prison for fatally shooting a St. Paul man at a Frogtown home last May.

Tisen Miguel Doverspike-Wiggins, 21, pleaded guilty Feb. 6 to second-degree unintentional murder-while committing a felony in the May 4 death of 26-year-old Erick Stevens, who was shot once in the chest.

Doverspike-Wiggins’ guilty plea came after he reached an agreement with the prosecution one week before a jury trial was set to begin. In exchange for the plea, a second charge of second-degree intentional murder-not premeditated was dismissed.

Ramsey County District Judge Patrick Diamond sentenced Doverspike-Wiggins on Wednesday in accordance with the agreement. He received credit for 319 days already served in custody.

According to the criminal complaint, Doverspike-Wiggins asked Stevens for his gun while the two men were in the kitchen of a home in the 700 block of Edmund Avenue. He then fired the gun once at Stevens.

St. Paul police officers were sent to the shooting around 3:25 a.m. and found Stevens lying on his stomach in the kitchen. He had a gunshot wound to his chest and an exit wound on his back. Officers gave medical aid to Stevens, who was in “agony and unable to respond to questions,” the complaint said. He was pronounced dead at Regions Hospital around 4 a.m.

Later that day, police officers in Howard Lake, about 50 miles west of St. Paul, responded to an apartment after a call of a suicide attempt. In a Facetime conversation with his sisters, Doverspike‐Wiggins had admitted to shooting a man in St. Paul, the complaint said. He then cut his throat and was taken to a hospital and treated for his injuries.

Murder investigation

Investigators executed search warrants at the apartment where Doverspike‐Wiggins attempted suicide and at his apartment next door. They found a pair of Air Jordan shoes that matched a footprint left on the deck of the St. Paul home.

Doverspike‐Wiggins’ sisters told investigators that he admitted to “shooting somebody” in front of witnesses and told them he “knew he was going to jail for a long time,” the charges said.

A woman who had been dating Doverspike‐Wiggins told investigators she thought he and Stevens were friends. About a week earlier, she said, Doverspike‐Wiggins got a call from a friend and that it sounded to her like Stevens was going to or had already scammed Doverspike‐Wiggins out of money, according to the complaint.

After he hung up, she told investigators, Doverspike‐Wiggins said he was going to beat up Stevens. A few days after the phone call, Stevens sent Doverspike‐Wiggins a photo of a handgun. Doverspike-Wiggins told her and others that he was going to take the gun.

About an hour after officers arrived at the St. Paul house, Doverspike‐Wiggins texted the woman and said he needed an Uber ride. Later that morning, he knocked on her door and he “tried to tell her something, but she didn’t want to know. She told him he couldn’t stay at her apartment, and she gave him a ride to Howard Lake,” the charges said.

That afternoon, St. Paul officers were sent to the 500 block of Charles Avenue after a woman working in a community garden found a handgun in a trashcan beneath a pile of metal wire. An analysis of a casing fired from the gun shows it is the same one that fired a casing recovered at the Edmund Avenue home.

Doverspike‐Wiggins has no other criminal convictions, court records show.

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