St. Paul man sentenced to community service for State Fair assault

Frederick Melo, Pioneer Press
Updated ·2 min read

A St. Paul man has been sentenced to 1,000 hours of community service and five years probation for his role in an assault at the 2021 Minnesota State Fair that left a 24-year-old man unconscious and hospitalized with head injuries.

Justin Theodore Morgan, 19, entered a guilty plea in September to aiding and abetting a third-degree felony assault causing substantial bodily harm. He appeared before Ramsey County District Judge Timothy Carey on Thursday for sentencing.

According to charges, a woman attending the Fair in September 2021 reported seeing two other women steal a man’s wallet. When she followed and confronted them, they attacked her and her sister-in-law. The woman’s husband intervened, and Morgan and Marquise Donta Brown, then 21 and also of St. Paul, beat him unconscious, according to witnesses.

On Thursday, Carey sentenced Morgan to five years of supervised probation and 1,000 hours of community service. Morgan received credit for four days he spent at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility. While on probation, he is not to possess firearms, ammunition or explosives. A call to his attorney was not immediately returned Friday.

Brown, who also was charged last year in connection with the State Fair attack, pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting third-degree assault in November and is scheduled to be sentenced in January.

Also in November, Brown entered a guilty plea to third-degree felony assault in an unrelated Sherburne County case based on charges filed in June 2020. In that incident, Brown was arrested attempting to drive away from the scene of a fight at a St. Cloud home where several shots had been fired.

He was sentenced to a year in jail, with credit for 159 days served.

In April, Brown entered a guilty plea to an unrelated misdemeanor domestic assault in Ramsey County.

Related Articles