On a summer evening in Burnsville, Minnesota, the life of Sheldon Jeremy Williams, a 37-year-old Black / African American male, was tragically cut short. On July 23, 2021, Williams was fatally shot in a hallway of the Burnsville Inn & Suites. The incident unfolded around 6:20 p.m. when police responded to reports of gunfire at the hotel located on Burnsville Parkway. Upon arrival, they discovered Williams unresponsive with a gunshot wound to his head; he was pronounced dead at the scene.
It was later determined that he had been shot six times.
Standing near Williams's body was a man identified as 24-year-old Ricky Eloy Ramirez of Houston, Texas, with a handgun near his feet. Ramirez was taken into custody without incident. An investigation revealed that Williams, a resident of South Carolina, was unarmed and had just stepped out of his hotel room when he was shot. Hotel surveillance footage captured the moment Ramirez fired a gun multiple times at Williams. There is no indication that the two men knew each other.
Ramirez had traveled to Minnesota from Texas with his girlfriend and father for work just two days prior to the shooting. According to his girlfriend, Ramirez began acting strangely the day before the incident, expressing fears that someone was chasing him and that the government was after him. Immediately after his arrest, Ramirez made statements to the police suggesting a state of paranoia, claiming people in a nearby room had an "AR and they have 100 more."
Ricky Eloy Ramirez was charged with second-degree murder in connection with Sheldon Jeremy Williams's death. However, in April 2022, a Dakota County District Court judge found Ramirez not guilty by reason of mental illness. The court determined that Ramirez was mentally ill at the time of the homicide and did not understand the nature of his actions. Consequently, Ramirez was ordered to be committed to a mental health facility.
