In the early morning hours of December 3, 2023, the life of Jamartre Michael Sanders, a 24-year-old Black man, was cut tragically short inside a Minneapolis tobacco shop. The scene was the Royal Cigar & Tobacco in the city's Dinkytown neighborhood, a place that would soon become the site of a violent altercation with fatal consequences. What began as a verbal argument between two groups of customers inside the shop quickly spiraled into a physical fight.
As employees attempted to
intervene and de-escalate the brawl, a gunman entered the store and opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun. The shooter targeted specific individuals involved in the altercation. Jamartre Sanders and another 24-year-old man, Bryson Lamarr Haskell, were both struck by multiple gunshots and died at the scene. An employee of the shop was also wounded by a gunshot but sustained non-life-threatening injuries. The investigation later revealed that at least 24 shots were fired inside the store.
During the chaos, a store employee activated a panic button, which locked the doors and trapped everyone inside. To escape, the gunman shot out the glass of the front door and crawled through the broken frame, followed by four other men. They fled the scene in a stolen getaway car. Investigators later determined the shooting was motivated by gang-related rivalries between the "Crazi Boyz" and "Lowz" street gangs.
Three months after the deadly shooting, authorities arrested 26-year-old Maleek Jabril Conley in connection with the murders. Surveillance footage from inside the store and from a nearby apartment building where the suspects fled helped investigators identify Conley as the gunman. In May 2025, a jury found Maleek Conley guilty of two counts of premeditated first-degree murder and several other charges. The conviction carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Another man, Taynard Twon Deshawn Godsey, was later charged with multiple counts of aiding an offender for his alleged role as the getaway driver.
