Matthew Alex Morton was the lookout guy.
It was his job to stand outside Gracson Eugene Simmons’ apartment while his friend, Christopher Jerome McKay, broke into his home and robbed him, Morton said in Ramsey County District Court.
The hope was to catch the 42-year-old St. Paul man while he was still asleep during the early morning hours of April 2, 2016.
McKay kicked in the door, and soon after Morton said he heard a “tussle,” followed by a gunshot.
“Then the guy came out toward me and I stepped back and he fell down the stairs,” Morton told Ramsey County District Judge John Guthmann.
The guy was Simmons. Police discovered his body around 3:30 a.m. that day at the bottom of a staircase inside his apartment building on the 1500 block of St. Anthony Avenue after a neighbor discovered him there.
After some prompting from Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Daniel Rait, Morton admitted he knew Simmons had been shot and was possibly dead when he fled the scene with McKay and later helped make arrangements to get out of town.
Morton made the admissions during a plea hearing Thursday morning.
The 26-year-old Michigan man pleaded guilty to one count of aiding an offender during the proceeding. A second-degree murder charge was dismissed as part of a plea deal reached with the state.
Under the terms of the agreement, Morton is expected to be sentenced in November to about 10 years in prison.
McKay, 52, also from Michigan, pleaded guilty to unintentional second-degree murder this past August. He will be sentenced later this month.
The two men ended up in Minnesota after McKay left Michigan to avoid arrest for a bank robbery there, according to his criminal complaint. He brought Morton with him.
While in town, the two stayed with the girlfriend of an acquaintance McKay made at a crack house in Detroit, charges say.
McKay ended up buying a Dodge Durango from the woman and using it to travel around the area. At some point, he and Morton met Simmons while at a bar on University Avenue and bought cocaine from him, according to the charges.
Simmons’ friends told police after his murder that he sold drugs, charges say.
A tenant of his building told officers he heard Simmons yell, “get the (expletive) out of here,” the complaint said. More yelling followed. Then the sound of a gunshot and someone falling down the stairs.
The mother of Simmons’ 9-year-old son described him as a quiet man and a proud father. She said he grew up in Detroit and had been living in the same apartment building in St. Paul for many years.