The fatal daytime shooting of a 66-year-old woman as she painted a mural in St. Paul’s Lowertown appears “extremely random” and was one of the “most cold-blooded” acts the city’s mayor and police chief said they’ve seen.

Investigators followed leads that led them to Belle Plaine in Scott County, where Police Chief Axel Henry said St. Paul officers shot and killed the suspect in a confrontation Thursday morning.

Wednesday’s shooting in St. Paul happened as the woman was on her knees to work on an art project. In that position, she was “about as vulnerable as a person could be” for someone who intended to harm them, Henry said. Surveillance video from the area showed “what appears to be right now a random act,” Henry said. “… It is awful.”

There is no evidence that the victim and suspect had a conflict or fight or “a previous association with one another,” which is rare in a homicide, Henry said. It’s also not known why the suspect, a Belle Plaine resident, was “even in St. Paul in the first place,” the chief added.

Court filings show the 29-year-old suspect was admitted to a hospital in January 2023 and, at the time, he was alleged to pose a risk of harm due to his mental illness and chemical dependency, a judge wrote. He put his hands around a nurse’s neck and pushed her against a wall, growled and snarled at hospital staff and threatened to kill them, and punched a security guard in the head and neck area, a court document said.

He “indicated he was scared of himself and he’d say he didn’t want to harm anyone and then shortly thereafter would state he wanted to kill others,” the document continued. It also said his mother told hospital staff he “had access to a firearm and she was fearful for her son’s safety.”

The family of Carrie Kwok wrote on her Facebook page Thursday that her killing “has been a complete shock to us all.”

“Please keep her in your prayers while she is transitioning into the next stage of her eternal life,” the post said.

Kwok was painting a mural in a parking lot outside the building where she lived, the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative. The building’s front door is in an alley behind Kellogg Boulevard between Wacouta and Wall streets.

“She was one of those people that, no matter how you were feeling, you just felt happier seeing her,” said Tim Jennen, an artist who is a site manager at the co-op “She was so enthused about everything we were doing, that’s why she was out here, contributing to this,” he said of the mural.

Outside the building Thursday morning, residents embraced each other and wiped tears from their eyes. “We’re very traumatized,” Jennen said.

Vehicle leaving crime scene led to Scott County

Officers were called about the shooting just before 5:20 p.m. Wednesday and found Kwok with apparent gunshot injuries. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

The homicide “literally shook our entire community and, in almost 30 years of police work, this is probably one of the most atypical homicides that I’ve seen,” Henry said.

Officers “very, very quickly established evidence and information,” Henry said. They learned of a vehicle that left the crime scene and they obtained a license plate number. They found it registered to a residence in the 100 block of Meridian Street in Belle Plaine.

Investigators also had an image from a camera of the suspect driving the vehicle from the scene, police said. St. Paul officers went to the Belle Plaine residence and found the vehicle parked nearby. They monitored the home overnight and planned to carry out a search warrant.

Police set up a perimeter and “attempted to develop a tactical plan to make contact” with the people in the residence and take the suspect in custody, Henry said.

Just after 6:30 a.m. Thursday, a man left the residence; he matched the description of the Lowertown shooting suspect, police said. Officers approached to take him into custody. He had a handgun and two St. Paul officers shot him, according to police.

He was airlifted to Hennepin County Medical Center, where he died.

The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is investigating. The officers involved were wearing body cameras that were activated.

Police are not looking for other suspects in the Lowertown homicide, Henry said.

‘Spread her wings as an artist’

Members of the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative have always worked to keep the alley “really beautiful and safe … by showing the neighborhood we care,” Jennen said.

They have a garden at the end of their parking lot below Fourth Street and “the entire co-op” has been working on the mural project recently in preparation for Art Crawl, Jennen said. Art Crawl is held twice a year and the next is scheduled for Oct. 4-6.

“To have lost a member of our community who was in the act of beautifying our community” is “one of the most brazen acts that I’ve ever seen in this community,” Mayor Melvin Carter said Thursday.

Kwok first learned about the Lowertown Lofts Artists Cooperative during an Art Crawl in 2021. She was “relatively new to the co-op,” according to Jennen.

“She was really coming here to be able to spread her wings as an artist,” Jennen said. She did various types of art, was an active member of the co-op and loved living there.

The co-op cordoned off the area of the mural after the shooting “to give some respect,” Jennen said, and people left flowers in the area.

The Lowertown Loft Artists Cooperative, established in 1985, is the oldest artist cooperative in the area that is a live/work space — all 29 artists live there, according to Jennen.

Suspect’s history

Seantrell Murdock was the man shot by St. Paul police, said his father, Richard Mims-Angel. He said authorities had not informed them “a whole lot as to what brought them down here, an hour outside of their jurisdiction.”

Court filings in 2023 civil commitment proceedings say Murdock had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. When he was admitted to the hospital then, he reported “experiencing paranoia and auditory and visual hallucinations,” a court document said.

He was “tripping” on LSD “and having some form of psychotic incident” when he was admitted to the hospital, the document continued.

After he began taking medications during his hospitalization, he was “calm, pleasant, cooperative with staff, and engaged with his groups and group programming,” the document said. He believed he’d previously been using drugs and alcohol to “self medicate” and “is willing to participate in out-patient chemical dependency treatment, meet with a psychiatrist for proper medication, and meet with a therapist,” the document continued.

If a court doesn’t move forward with a civil commitment, a person may be released with a written plan for services they’ve agreed to and conditions they “must meet to avoid revocation of the stayed commitment order,” the document said. Civil commitment for Murdock was stayed for six months, concluding August 2023, on various conditions — including that he take prescribed medication and cooperate with Scott County Adult Mental Health case management.

Criminal court records for Murdock show his most serious conviction was felony burglary from a 2013 case in Cottage Grove. A man said he confronted someone he didn’t know, later identified as Murdock, who was in his attached garage. The man said he saw the burglar rummaging around on his workbench.

In 2016, Murdock was charged with possession of a firearm by a person ineligible due to a conviction of a crime of a violence; he couldn’t have a gun because of the burglary conviction, the criminal complaint said. That case was dismissed because a court found law enforcement seized the gun in an unconstitutional search, according to a court filing.

While Police Chief Henry didn’t detail information about the suspect Thursday, he said the Lowertown homicide and the subsequent shooting by officers “has all kinds of hallmarks and flags that … we as a state and as a country need to start taking more seriously. We have rules and regulations, both on the state and federal level, that talk … about who can have guns, talk about the kind of mental health we need to have to possess firearms or levels of intoxication. It is important that we recognize these flags.”

Mims-Angel, Murdock’s father, said Thursday he didn’t know what led officers to shoot Murdock, who was a father of four. Murdock’s children were in the home at the time, Mims-Angel said.

Murdock “went outside to investigate a potential threat to his family, because of some suspicious activity around our home the night before, which we didn’t know involved law enforcement,” Mims-Angel said.

Neighborhood safety

Reports of serious crimes are down in Lowertown — there were 166 reports of cases ranging from aggravated assault to robbery to theft since the start of the year, compared with 249 during the same period last year and 216 in 2022, according to police department data.

Wednesday’s homicide is not “indicative” of the area, Henry said. “That’s actually, in many ways, what makes it so scary — is that it’s this … random thing that took place here.”

Geruth Buetow, who has lived in the area for 10 years, stopped by the mural Thursday morning to pay her respects to Kwok.

She said she was saddened by the violence in an “artist community, full of love and peace, creativity and celebrating life. … It really shatters people’s sense of well-being.”

Buetow said she feels safe in her neighborhood, “but I don’t go out at night very often,” she added.

Jerry Blakey opened Lowertown Wine & Spirits in 2004, after serving as a St. Paul City Council member for a decade. He said he’s heartbroken by what happened to a nearby resident.

Blakey said Thursday that he’s a supporter of the city, but “from a business standpoint, we feel kind of alone down here,” especially with restaurants in the area that have closed.

“I think we definitely need more support from city leadership, we need more police presence and … we need more positive foot traffic with more restaurants that can make it down here and more positive events,” Blakey said.