Inset: Gyaw Way (Ramsey County Sheriff”s Office). Background: The 1500 block of Hoyt Avenue East in St. Paul, Minnesota, where Way allegedly shot a teen boy (KARE).
A 61-year-old Minnesota man allegedly shot the 17-year-old son of a man whom the suspect blamed for a fire last year that killed his son — and then went to lie down on the couch as if nothing major happened.
Gyaw Way is facing a charge of first-degree assault with great bodily harm. According to a probable cause arrest affidavit, cops responded around 3:45 p.m. Tuesday to a home in the 1500 block of Hoyt Avenue East in St. Paul for a shooting. When they arrived, they found a 17-year-old boy in the driver’s seat of an Acura with a gunshot wound to his chest and an exit wound to his back.
The boy “screamed in pain” and said he was shot by an “old guy who he didn’t know.” Cops say the bullet hit his liver and lung and broke his ribs. He is expected to survive but will have to be in the hospital for at least two weeks.
Cops learned Way entered the home after the shooting and his 26-year-old son allegedly helped hide the gun in the basement. Way was wearing a green bag that contained a box of 9 mm ammunition when he was arrested, per police.
The suspect spoke in Karen, a language spoken along the Thailand-Myanmar border, but did speak some English. He allegedly said “sorry,” “baby die,” and “no accident.” Residents of the home where Way lived told cops that he and his son had been living with them after a fire had claimed the life of his son. The suspect was overseas at the time of the fire.
Way had apparently lured the victim and his father to the home under the guise that he would pay a debt, cops wrote. When the victim and his dad arrived, Way entered the Acura with them, cops wrote. That’s when Way allegedly shot the teen. The people inside the home heard the gunshot.
“Way was intoxicated, and he returned to the home and lay on the couch,” the affidavit stated. “Way made a comment wondering why they called police, and Way said he didn’t care that he was going to jail.”
The father of the victim said he has an amputated leg and Way was his caregiver. Way apparently blamed the victim’s father for the fire.
According to local NBC affiliate KARE, the December fire was accidental and started near a space heater.
Way remains in the Ramsey County Jail on a $200,000 bond. His next hearing is set for May 13.
