Standing with his head down in an orange prison jumpsuit, Cass Cordel O’Neal told the judge he was “wrong” when he shot and killed two young men during a revenge-fueled dispute over drugs outside a St. Paul motel last spring.
“I would like to apologize to the families. … I made a mistake,” O’Neal, 32, told Ramsey County District Court Judge Richard Kyle at his sentencing hearing Thursday. “Every night I am haunted by that mistake. … I sit in my cell and cry.
“I did have a choice … and I made the wrong choice,” the St. Paul man said.
O’Neal pleaded guilty in August to two counts of aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder in the deaths of Dominique Charles Moss, 23, and Nicholas Bennett Tousley, 30.
The men were gunned down outside the Midway Motel on Snelling Avenue on March 22 after Ronald Conway hatched a plan to try and recover methamphetamine and money he believed Tousley stole from him.
He asked O’Neal to come along with a gun to provide muscle. He elicited another man, Eric John Benner, to be his driver.
As the three huddled outside Moss’s motel room, where Tousley was staying, Mosley unexpectedly showed up at the door. Soon O’Neal started firing shots. Moss was shot “point-blank” in the back as he lay on the sidewalk, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Janice Barker said during Thursday’s hearing. Tousley was fatally shot in the back as he ran away.
Commending the “rare” and “genuine” remorse O’Neal has consistently shown over the men’s “brutal,” and “senseless” deaths, Judge Kyle sentenced O’Neal to 28 years in prison for their murders.
The length was in alignment with what both the state and defense requested at sentencing. O’Neal also will be given credit for the 338 days he’s served in jail since his arrest.
Despite being the shooter in the double-homicide, O’Neal’s sentence was considerably shorter than the 40-year sentence recently handed down to Conway for his role in the murders.
Kyle acknowledged the sentence disparity was “odd” but said it was justified because Conway had been the mastermind behind the lethal plan and therefore bore the most responsibility for Tousley and Moss’s deaths.
He also said O’Neal’s willingness to testify for the state against Conway during his trial factored into his sentencing decision, as did his swift assumption of responsibility.
“This crime has caused immeasurable pain. … Obviously we have lost two very young men with lots of potential, and that’s on you,” Kyle said. “I don’t know if the families … can forgive you. … That’s not for me to say.”
Relatives of both Moss and Tousley read tear-filled victim-impact statements at the hearing, about the pain they’ve endured daily since the fatal shootings.
Moss was a security guard with ambitions of becoming a police officer. He had several siblings who now have to grow up without him, said his mother, Nadine Moss. His 80-year-old grandfather, who helped raise him, now struggles with heart problems.
“This has been a complete nightmare,” Nadine Moss said. “I can’t sleep at night. … I have dreams of my son crying for help and bleeding. … My heart hurts so bad.”
Tousley was a father and a brother to one sister, according to the statement read in court by his aunt, Sue Keswani. He grew up in Florida and moved to Minnesota in late 2014 to be closer to relatives. He previously worked as an auto technician and found himself addicted to drugs after suffering from an injury.
The 6-foot-5 “gentle-giant” had been through treatment twice and had plans to attend Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation when he died.
Keswani described the pain her family has felt since his death as “an emotional bomb.”
A letter was also read on behalf of his parents, who still live in Florida.
They said his murder “consumes our every thought.”
Benner will be sentenced for two counts of aiding and abetting unintentional second-degree murder next month.