MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – A Brooklyn Park man pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection to a shooting last year at an after-hours club and immediately received a sentence to more than eight years in prison, court officials announced Wednesday.
Dominique Deshon Sinkfield, 25, admitted Tuesday to shooting and killing 32-year-old Demetrius Harper last March in a club on the 3800 block of Fremont Avenue North. District Court Judge Tamara Garcia sentenced Sinkfield to 104 months in prison, the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office says.
A second-degree murder charge against Sinkfield was dropped, and he has received credit for 263 days served.
Sinkfield was offered the lesser manslaughter charge because he had the grounds for a self-defense case, the attorney’s office said. Prosecutors were prepared to rebut that case, but it raised the possibility that Sinkfield could have been acquitted.
Twenty-eight-year-old Cory Bryant, of Minneapolis, is scheduled for trial later this year. He is charged with killing 23-year-old Erick Felton, of Minneapolis, in the same the same shooting incident.
The building that housed the after-hours club is now rented out to a church.
