Tee Rainer woke up from a nap around 10:15 p.m. on Oct. 22, 2023, and couldn’t fall back asleep. He was too restless.

“I didn’t think anything of it,” Rainer said in a Ramsey County courtroom Tuesday.

Six hours later, he got a call from his son’s mother, who in between screams said their 23-year-old son, David Lashawn Isaac, was shot and killed on St. Paul’s West Side.

“I couldn’t wrap my mind around what I was hearing,” Rainer recalled, fighting back tears. “I found out later it was around 10:16 p.m. when he was shot. My baby was taken from this world for no reason.”

In January, Justice Jacques Glaspie pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional murder in the killing, which investigators say followed “play fighting” between the two St. Paul men in a parking lot. Ramsey County District Judge Timonty Carey denied a downward departure request from Isaac’s attorney on Tuesday and sentenced the 21-year-old to nearly 22 years in prison. He received credit for 489 days already served in custody.

Isaac was a 2021 graduate of Gordon Parks High School and “wasn’t a street dude,” his father had told the judge. “He had a family that loved him and adored him, and anyone that met him was drawn to him.”

Isaac had a “beautiful smile,” his brother James Isaac told the court. “He loved anyone and everyone.”

‘He just shot him, man’

Isaac and Glaspie hardly knew each other before that night, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Colin Haley said Tuesday.

The two men and others had recorded videos, showing off bottles of liquor and an assortment of handguns. Surveillance video later showed them and others walking through a parking lot. At one point the group engaged in a “play fight,” with Glaspie and Isaac tussling with one another and falling to the ground.

“It did not appear that they fought in a serious or angry fashion,” the criminal complaint states. “Once the play fighting ended, Glaspie got up from the ground with an obvious limp.”

Other surveillance video from around 10:16 p.m. shows the group walking through another parking lot in the 400 block of South Clinton Avenue, near Cesar Chavez and Robert streets. Glaspie jumped on Isaac’s back and spun him around before the motion-activated camera stopped recording.

A witness who had been with the group told investigators that after Glaspie jumped on Isaac’s back, Glaspie pulled out a gun and fired it once, hitting Isaac in the face. “He just shot him, man,” the complaint states.

Just over two hours later, police were called to the area on a report of a man lying on the ground. Officers found Isaac on his back with his head in a pool of blood and a gunshot wound below his nose and above his upper lip. He was not breathing, and medics pronounced him dead at the scene.

“He laid on the ground for hours alone,” his father said Tuesday.

Officers found Isaac’s cellphone in a pocket, and a single spent 9-mm shell casing several feet from his body. Glaspie was identified as a suspect after investigators found videos on the phone.

Glaspie, who was arrested nearly a month after the killing, first told investigators in an interview that he didn’t know anything about Isaac’s killing, then said another man in the group shot him. When they showed Glaspie a surveillance video photo of him with a gun in his hand, he stared at the picture and said nothing.

Glaspie then said he ran to Isaac with his gun out, grabbed Isaac’s shoulder and spun Isaac toward him, according to the complaint. He said he planned on robbing Isaac, but Isaac tried to grab the gun so he shot him.

Glaspie’s attorney reiterated that claim in court Tuesday, which led to Isaac’s mother and another family member getting up from their seats and leaving the courtroom .

Court records show Glaspie had one prior criminal conviction — misdemeanor theft for stealing a bottle of liquor from the Target store on University Avenue. He was sentenced to one year of probation eight days before his arrest on the murder charge.

‘Please forgive me’

Glaspie’s sentence was outlined in a plea agreement, which also allowed his attorney to argue for less time. The “middle of the box” sentence per state guidelines was a 25½-year prison term.

Glaspie’s attorney, assistant public defender Emma Koski, asked Judge Carey to give him between 15 and about 16½ years. She noted how he admitted at his plea hearing that he had drunk alcohol and used marijuana and ecstasy that night. She said “there were some self-defense issues in the facts” and the offense was “significantly less serious” than a typical second-degree murder.

“I want to make it clear: Nothing I’m saying is trying to minimize the offense or the loss, but simply kind of explain where Mr. Glaspie was coming from,” she said.

Prosecutor Haley told the judge that those circumstances, as well as Glaspie’s remorse and not having to put Isaac’s family through “the pain of a trial,” were considered when the state made the plea offer to him.

Glaspie apologized to Isaac’s family before hearing his sentence, saying: “I never meant to put you guys through these things. I pray for you guys every day, and I ask that you please forgive me.”

Carey said Glaspie’s remorse, “respectful demeanor” in the courtroom and limited criminal history were “encouraging.” However, departing from the guidelines “is not to be made based on the characteristics of the person,” he said. “The nature of the offense is the route by which this court has the discretion to make decisions about diminishing the amount of time that you will need to serve.”