Man sentenced to 15 years for shooting at Black Lives Matter activists
According to CBS Minnesota, the man who shot five Black Lives Mater protesters in 2015 has been sentenced to 15 years.
Allen Scarsella along with some friends of his got into an argument the the protesters, who were marching against the shooting death of Jamar Clark, before Sarsella put on a mask and went down to the police district to start livestreaming as he shot at the protesters, eventually shooting five people there.
Scarsella was convicted in February of a dozen felony counts of assault and riot, and he was sentenced Wednesday.
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Prosecutors had reportedly asked for the maximum sentencing, while defense lawyers argued that Scarsella was acting in self-defense. Defense attorney Laura Heinrich even went so far as to claim that the shooting stemmed from naivety and that Scarsella simply didn’t understand what life was like for black people in the community, going on to suggest that his brain was not yet fully developed because he was 22 years old at the time of the shooting.
However, Judge Hilary Lindell Caligiuri ultimately agreed with prosecutors, citing months of messages Scarsella had sent to friends as evidence of his deeply held racist beliefs, before sentencing him to 15 years in prison. The maximum he could have given Scarsella was 20 years.
