A 33-year-old Minnesota man will spend nearly 50 years in prison for shooting and killing his pregnant ex-fiancée and her trauma-born infant in the parking lot of an Amazon fulfillment center in January.
In October, Donte Raphael McCray pleaded guilty to two counts of murder in the second degree for the shooting deaths of Kyla Bianca O’Neal, 31, and her 9-day-old child, Messiah.
On Tuesday morning, the defendant was sentenced by Dakota County Judge David Lutz to 306 months in state prison for O’Neal’s death and 261 months for Messiah’s death. The sentences, which are to be served consecutively, add up to just over 47 years behind bars.
“Mr. McCray will now be held accountable for the senseless murder of both Kyla and Messiah,” Dakota County Attorney Kathy Keena said in a statement on Tuesday. “I’d like to extend my sincere condolences to family, friends and loved ones of Kyla and Messiah.”
McCray was initially charged with one count of manslaughter in the second degree over the Jan. 8 shooting in Lakeville, an exurb in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area. Police originally described the defendant as an acquaintance of the deceased and noted that her baby was delivered at a nearby hospital, alive – for just a few days.
The next day, however, a criminal complaint was filed in Dakota County charging McCray with one count of murder in the second degree for killing O’Neal, a beloved mother of three. The woman’s death was considered intentional but not premeditated.
A GoFundMe for Kyla O’Neal’s funeral expenses and to help care for her three surviving children was started by her eldest sister, who remembers the deceased mom as an “intelligent Queen.”
Left: Donte McCray; Right: Kyla O’Neal. (Lakeville Police Department; GoFundMe)
“She loved doing makeup. She loved doing hair. She made sure her kids were good,” the victim’s aunt, Rochelle Thomas, told Minneapolis-based Fox affiliate KMSP in the aftermath of the violence.
According to the Lakeville Police Department, a “distraught” McCray told responding officers he and O’Neal “had been in an argument most of the day” because she had learned that he had “another child with another woman” while she was pregnant. At some point, McCray allegedly told police, he took a Lyft to his mother’s house but then O’Neal “came and picked him back up” to take him to work.
In the defendant’s first alleged version of the story, he “realized he had guns in his bags” and wanted to make sure they were not chambered to make the guns “safe for his kids.” Then, he allegedly said, he tried to “clear” a gun in the parking lot – which O’Neal objected to. When she began driving away, the first version of the story goes, McCray held onto her car and accidentally shot her in the neck.
O’Neal’s mother, when speaking with police later on, recounted additional events leading up to the shooting that day.
The victim’s mother allegedly said she had been “called over” to the couple’s residence because one of O’Neal’s children told her McCray “was getting aggressive” with their mother, according to the complaint. Upon learning about McCray’s alleged infidelity, O’Neal said “she didn’t want to be bothered” with him and that he “had to go,” her mother added. Additionally, O’Neal’s mother told police, her daughter said that when the baby was born, he wouldn’t have McCray’s name.
An unidentified witness cited by police allegedly said the defendant repeatedly threatened the victim on the day in question.
While the couple was allegedly arguing over a set of keys, the witness says they had to break up a scuffle. In that altercation, O’Neal allegedly broke McCray’s phone. He then allegedly told O’Neal that if another man came around his kids, he was “going to kill your ass.”
“You all ain’t bulletproof,” the defendant allegedly told the family. “I’m going to f––– you all up. You ain’t bulletproof.”
Officers say they then reviewed surveillance footage of the shooting and confronted McCray with what they had learned. At that point, police say, the defendant’s tune changed substantially.
In a criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime, McCray said when O’Neal’s car backed up, “he was angry that the door hit him.” So, he raised his gun, pointed it at her and pulled the trigger. Still, at the time, McCray “claimed that he did not know there was still a round in the chamber of the gun when he pointed it and shot,” the complaint says.
O’Neal was found unresponsive and bleeding. She was rushed to the Hennepin County Medical Center where she was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound that “transected her cervical spine.”
Doctors performed an emergency c-section to save her baby boy and eventually got a pulse.
Family members held vigil over the child born from violence and did all they could to keep him alive.
“I’m rubbing him, kissing him, consoling him, letting him know that we’re out here fighting and I want him to continue fighting,” Katina O’Neal, Kyla O’Neal’s mother, told KMSP while he fought for life.
Messiah was named by family members the day after he was born. He died in the hospital exactly one week after being given his name. McCray was charged with a second count of murder by late January.
The condemned man is currently in custody at the Dakota County Jail awaiting transfer to the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
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