St. Paul rec center shooter gets 10 years in plea deal

A Ramsey County judge on Friday handed a decadelong sentence to a former St. Paul recreation center employee who shot and critically wounded a teenager last year.

During a January 2023 fight with a group of teens at the Jimmy Lee Recreation Center, Exavir Dwayne Binford Jr. pulled out a gun and shot JuVaughn Turner, then 16, in his forehead.

Andrew Marshall, an attorney who represents JuVaughn’s mother Margarita Davison, said at Binford’s sentencing hearing that JuVaughn had to have a portion of his skull removed and still suffers from seizures.

“Ms. Davison thought that JuVaughn going to the Jimmy Lee Rec Center after school was a good thing,” Marshall said. “She thought it was a safe environment for JuVaughn and other kids. The idea that the person running the rec center would try to harm her son was unimaginable. A year has passed now, but the fear she has for JuVaughn has not gone away.”

Marshall added that the teen’s arm and left hand still tremble, he becomes fatigued easily, and is unable to leave home on his own because Davison must be on hand to administer emergency medication. JuVaughn has not been able to return to school and is taking online classes, Marshall said.

Marshall is representing Davison in a federal lawsuit that alleges that the city of St. Paul knew that Binford had a “history of violent conduct and threats toward minors” but declined to fire him.

In an agreement with the Ramsey County Attorney’s Office, Binford pleaded guilty in December to first-degree assault. Prosecutors promised to drop a more serious count of attempted murder.

“He had the opportunity to walk away, other employees at the rec center implored him to walk away,” said Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Wesley Abrahamson. “Instead what he did was to escalate the encounter verbally between himself, JuVaughn, and JuVaughn’s friends.”

Under Minnesota sentencing guidelines, the assault count typically carries a sentence of about seven years for someone with no criminal record. Because children were present during the shooting, Binford’s plea deal called for a term of 10 years and five months, to which Judge Joy Bartscher agreed.

“I think this matter is being resolved in a fair and reasonable manner,” said defense attorney Ira Whitlock. “No one wants to go to prison, but Mr. Binford has accepted responsibility for his conduct.”

Binford declined an opportunity to address the court.

As the hearing drew to a close, the judge told Davison that there was no amount of prison time that she could give Binford “that would put you back to where you were before this happened.”

“The fact that we live currently in a society where people have ready access to guns, where people think it’s an OK thing to go to work with a gun when they’re not law enforcement, when people think that the way to settle arguments is to pull out a gun and threaten or shoot people is extremely disturbing me as a judge and as a citizen of Ramsey County and of the world,” Bartscher said.

Addressing Binford, the judge added, "You had choices to make, and you made horrible choices."

Under Minnesota law, Binford must serve nearly seven years of his sentence in prison and the rest on supervised release. He has credit toward his sentence for the year that he has spent in custody since the shooting.

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