An Oklahoma man was sentenced to 25 years in prison Tuesday for fatally shooting a Milwaukee man in St. Paul after his niece’s wedding and a night of drinking.

Jason Moua, 44, had pleaded guilty in Ramsey County District Court to second-degree intentional murder in the killing of 36-year-old Khoau Yang, who he shot in the chest in St. Paul’s Battle Creek neighborhood in the early morning hours of Oct. 1, 2023. Moua, of Jay, Okla., faced between 22¾ and 26 years in prison as part of a plea agreement.

According to the criminal complaint, Moua and Yang were in town for the wedding and afterward had gone to a few bars with others. The two men, who hadn’t met before, argued and fought in an SUV before the shooting.

“The night ended in the most senseless way possible,” Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Dan Rait said Tuesday in court.

Police were sent to the 2100 block of Scenic Place, which is southeast of Interstate 94 and McKnight Road, at 2:10 a.m. on a report of a gunshot and a man lying in the street. Officers found Yang facedown with no pulse.

A trail of blood near his body led to a white shirt and a cellphone that investigators later discovered belonged to Moua, the complaint says.

In Yang’s pockets were a cellphone and a room key to the Double Tree by Hilton hotel, which is about one-third mile from where he was killed. A cellphone message referenced the Dog House Bar and Grill in Maplewood.

Bar surveillance video showed Yang, Moua and three others leaving in an SUV around 1:50 a.m. the morning of the killing.

Officers obtained a search warrant for Moua’s cellphone. In a text thread with his son, Moua said he was coming up for his niece’s wedding and said he needed a gun for protection. The woman lived at a Jackson Street home in St. Paul.

Officers executed a search warrant at the home and recovered a box of ammunition matching casings and a round found at the killing. Officers confirmed that Moua and a friend came up from Oklahoma and stayed at the home before the murder.

Investigators spoke to a Milwaukee man who said he drove to St. Paul with Yang and another man. He said the trio hung out with Moua and his friend from Oklahoma. He said they went to a couple of bars and ended up at the Dog House Bar & Grill.

After they left the bar and while on their way to the hotel, the man told police, Moua and Yang fought in the SUV and that the driver pulled over on Scenic Place. They all got out of the SUV, and the fight between the two men continued.

The other men tried to stop the fight, but Moua took out a gun and tried to pistol-whip Yang in the face. Moua and Yang fell to the ground, and one shot was fired. Yang tried to stand up and Moua shot him. The man told police he saw Yang take his last breath.

“The fight could have ended with everybody going home talking about a wedding,” prosecutor Rait said Tuesday in court. “Instead, it ended with somebody now dead.”

After the shooting, Moua pointed the gun at the other men and ordered them back into the SUV, threatening to kill them if they “snitched on him,” the complaint says.

Moua was charged five days after the killing and was arrested in Delaware County, Okla.

Court records show that in 2005 Moua was tied to a gang-related shootout that left two men dead outside Jimmy’s Pro Billiards on Central Avenue in Columbia Heights. He pleaded guilty in Anoka County District Court to aiding an offender after the fact, second-degree assault and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, and was sentenced to 13 years in prison in November 2006.

No remorse

Rait told the court that little is known about Yang.

“This is probably the first homicide sentencing I’ve done where there is no victim’s family to come participate,” he said. “It’s not something I’m used to.”

Moua expressed no remorse for the killing during a presentence investigation, Rait said.

Moua’s attorney, Ben Refling, told the court he is “someone who I think is very closed up … and I think that’s reflected in the PSI. But it’s not the entire story of who he is.”

Moua declined to address court before hearing the sentence. As deputies led him out of the courtroom, he waved to his relatives and friends who sat in the gallery.