Rochester Man Sentenced For Second Murder Conviction
Moorhead, MN (KROC-AM News) - A Rochester man has been convicted of another murder.
29-year-old Idris Abdillahi Haji-Mohamed was sentenced in May to 25 1/2 years in prison for the murder of a Twin Cities man in December 2022. He was found guilty of two counts of second-degree murder during a trial that was held in April.
In that case, Haji-Mohamed was accused of fatally shooting 26-year-old Jeremy Ellis of Plymouth. The criminal complaint says the victim was found shot to death inside a vehicle that was parked near US Bank Stadium.
The court document indicated the vehicle was registered to the Rochester man, who was arrested after he was spotted leaving an apartment complex near the crime scene. The criminal complaint says Haji-Mohamed told Minneapolis police he was attempting to purchase drugs from Ellis when the other man ordered him out of his vehicle at gunpoint. Haji-Mohamed then stated that he opened fire on the vehicle as Ellis was backing away from him.
His second murder conviction stems from a fatal shooting that occurred in northwestern Minnesota the previous year. The criminal complaint in that case says police in Moorhead responded to a report of a shooting on September 10, 2021 and found a deceased man who had been shot several times at "point-blank range."
The charging document says a surveillance camera recorded video of Haji-Mohamed chasing the victim and firing a handgun at him outside an apartment building. The court document also states that the video shows the Rochester man pursuing the victim until he finds him lying on the ground and Haji-Mohamed "fires approximately five bullets, point-blank into the victim's body and kills him."
The criminal complaint also describes a portion of the surveillance camera video that shows Haji-Mohamed dropping the magazine clip from his gun and picking it up from the ground while he is chasing the victim. The video also shows that his wallet fell to the ground at that moment. Moorhead police later reported finding Haji-Mohamed's ID at the crime scene.
Following his arrest in the Moorhead murder case, which resulted in a first-degree murder charge, Haji-Mohamed was released on bail and allegedly disabled his GPS tracking device before traveling to Minneapolis, where he murdered the man near the Vikings' football stadium.
Haji-Mohamed today entered into a plea agreement in Clay County Court and admitted to a second-degree murder charge in exchange for the dismissal of the first-degree count. The judge presiding over the case sentenced the Rochester man to 30 years in prison, which he will be allowed to serve concurrently with the 25 1/2 year sentence he received for the Minneapolis homicide.
Court records show his criminal history also includes a conviction for a shooting that occurred in Rochester in 2017. The police report on the incident described it as a gun battle between two groups of people in the parking lot of the local Olive Garden restaurant.
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