St. Paul Man Sentenced to Prison for Illegal Possession of a Machine Gun; Crashed Stolen Vehicle Through a Restaurant During Police Chase

ST. PAUL, Minn. - A St. Paul man has been sentenced to 39 months in prison followed by two years of supervised release for the illegal possession of a machine gun, following a drive-by shooting incident that ended with the defendant crashing the stolen vehicle he was driving through an unoccupied downtown Saint Paul bar and restaurant, announced United States Attorney Andrew M. Luger.

According to court documents, on the afternoon of February 15, 2023, officers with the St. Paul Police Department responded to a shots-fired 911 call in the area of Luella Street North and Wilson Avenue, a densely populated residential neighborhood. Witnesses reported hearing automatic gunfire coming from a black Jeep that was apparently chasing another Jeep. Within a few blocks of the area, officers located a black Jeep with a rear window that appeared to have been shot up. When officers turned around in their squad car to follow the Jeep, it led officers on a high-speed chase until it eventually hit another vehicle and crashed through the entirety of a restaurant in downtown St. Paul, which was unoccupied at the time. Officers saw Moeshea Isiah Hart, 19, and two others, exit the Jeep and detained them. The key fob for the Jeep, along with Hart's house keys, were in Hart's pants pocket. On the floor of the restaurant, near the Jeep's driver's side door, officers recovered a loaded Glock model 45 9mm pistol with an inserted high-capacity magazine and an attached switch, a conversion device that turns a semiautomatic handgun into a fully automatic machine gun. Approximately 11 9mm discharged cartridge casings were located in and around the driver's area of the Jeep, including one outside the Jeep on the floor of the restaurant. Forensic ballistics analysis determined that one randomly selected discharged cartridge casing had been fired by the recovered 9mm machinegun. Police later determined that the Jeep had been reported stolen from St. Paul in December 2022.

Hart pleaded guilty on March 27, 2024, to one count of possession of a machine gun. He was sentenced today in U.S. District Court before Judge Jerry W. Blackwell.

This case is the result of an investigation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the St. Paul Police Department, and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Bejar prosecuted the case.