In less than a month in 2018, 16-year-old Shire Basal went on a crime spree that included two robberies and a murder. The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced Tuesday that Basal pleaded guilty to the murder and one of the robberies.
Basal, now 17, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty Tuesday morning to second-degree murder and first-degree aggravated robbery. As part of the agreement, Basal will receive 25 years in prison for the two crimes and the other robbery charge will be dismissed at sentencing scheduled for June 10.
Although Basal was 16 years old at the time of the murder, based on the severity of the offenses, Minnesota law calls for someone that age to be tried as an adult unless there are substantial reasons to try him as a juvenile. A Hennepin County District Court Judge had certified him as an adult in February, according to the press release.
According to the juvenile petition first filed against Basal, and his own testimony in court, Basal and his friends were filming a rap video in the parking lot behind the Lucky Dragon Restaurant at 1818 Riverside Ave. in the early evening of Sept. 7.
During the filming, 32-year-old Liban Abdulahi of Burnsville drove into the parking lot and stopped. Basal immediately ran over to the driver’s side window of Abdulahi’s automobile and fired several times, killing the older man. Basal then ran away. Basal said the motive for the killing was he and Abdulahi had an altercation several months earlier, the complaint said.
Three weeks earlier, on Aug. 19, Basal admitted he went up to a woman walking on a Minneapolis street, brandished a BB gun and told her to give him everything she had. He then ripped the woman’s purse off her shoulder and fled.
In the third case, which will be dismissed at the sentencing, Basal was with three other men who pulled a gun on a man and punched him repeatedly as they took his cell phone, wallet and $300 in cash on the of 2400 block of 10th Avenue South, according to the juvenile petition. That robbery occurred two days after the murder.
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Minnesota Crime Watch & Information publishes news, info and commentary about crime, public safety and livability issues in Minneapolis, the Twin Cities and Greater Minnesota.
