Mechanic Stabbing: Man Could Get 40 Years For 'Particularly Cruel' Crime

HENNEPIN COUNTY, MN — A jury took about 10 hours to find Rondell Camp guilty of beating and stabbing to death a man who was working on a car in his garage, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Thursday. The Hennepin County District Court jury found Camp guilty of second-degree murder Wednesday afternoon.

The jury also found Camp, 25, guilty of aggravating circumstances in the murder, including that the killing was "particularly cruel" and his victim was "particularly vulnerable," Hennepin County officials said. With those findings in mind, a judge can exceed the sentence normally recommended by the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines.

Sentencing was set for Oct. 23 and assistant Hennepin County Attorney Chuck Gerlach could argue for a sentence all the way up to the statutory maximum of 480 months, or 40 years, in prison. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Minnesota Patch, click here to find your local Minnesota Patch. Also, follow us on Facebook, and if you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

According to the criminal complaint and testimony in the eight-day trial, police were called to the alley in the 3700 block of Aldrich Avenue North the evening of Jan. 29 because Camp was screaming in pain as he crawled through the alley with a leg injury.

Police found 56-year-old Steve Parker, Sr., dead in a nearby garage. There was blood "everywhere" and Parker had broken bones in his face, cuts to the head and a large stab wound on the left side of his neck below the ear, according to a news release.

Parker was well-known as a neighborhood mechanic and the car he was working on in the garage belonged to Camp. Neighbors heard a loud argument coming from inside the garage and then nothing until Camp began screaming in pain.

The defense argued Camp acted in self-defense because Parker had a gun. However, Gerlach argued that the gun was on the other side of the garage and it had no blood on it, indicating Parker was not holding it when he was attacked.

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