17-year-old sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison for deadly shooting in northeast Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - A 17-year-old boy who pleaded guilty to a deadly shooting in last June was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison Monday. 

Police say Jered Ohsman and another boy shot Steven Markey, 39, on June 11, 2019 while trying to steal his car in northeast Minneapolis. 

Ohsman, who was 16 at the time of the murder, was supposed to stand trial as an adult, but he entered a guilty plea in March to second-degree intentional murder. His sentencing was originally scheduled for April 1, but it was postponed to July 6 due to the pandemic. He still faces two aggravated robbery charges. 

He apologized to the victim’s family in court Monday. 

“There is nothing I can do to take back what I’ve done,” he said. “I would like the court to know that I am sorry for what I’ve done.”

Ohsman’s defense team pinned much of the blame for what happened on a failed child protection system in Hennepin County and asked for a reduced sentence.

The defense explained that their client was clinically diagnosed with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, and his mother and father’s parental rights were terminated, leaving the young man as a ward of the state without the necessary care, direction or treatment to know right from wrong.

“We have a tremendous and systemic failure. If we want to think of there being a school to prison pipeline in this country, what we have is foster care is a bullet train. They did absolutely nothing,” defense attorney Kathy Cima said.

Prosecutors fought back against the narrative. 

“The defendant and his co-respondent planned to rob somebody. They decided when they woke up, they were going to rob somebody. They had a kit that they carried with them, a backpack containing bandanas and firearms,” prosecutor Maximillia Utley said.

Ohsman’s accomplice, who was 15 at the time, is scheduled to appear in court Tuesday to determine if he will be certified as an adult.