Malcom Jamal Williams, a 29-year-old Black/African American man from Minneapolis, was fatally shot on Christmas Eve, December 24, 2020, inside the Lake Street light-rail station near Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue in Minneapolis. Police were called to the station in the 2300 block of East Lake Street shortly before 2:30 p.m. and found Williams in the station’s upstairs escalator lobby or vestibule without a pulse.
Officers attempted lifesaving measures, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s findings, as later described in court-related reporting, determined that Williams died from multiple gunshot wounds. Initial investigators believed an argument or confrontation between Williams and another person had escalated until the other person produced a firearm and opened fire. In the days immediately after the killing, police were still searching for the shooter, and no arrest had been announced.
The investigation eventually centered on surveillance footage from inside the station. According to the criminal case later filed by prosecutors, Tenzin Yamgha entered the lobby accompanied by a woman. Later reporting describing the footage said Yamgha was wearing a blue baseball cap, a green hooded Nike jacket and sunglasses. Williams approached him, and a confrontation developed. Investigators said the footage appeared to show Yamgha keeping a firearm in his pocket during the dispute. At one point, he warned Williams, “I will pull the trigger,” and told him to step away. The confrontation continued, however, and after Williams removed Yamgha’s hat from his head, Yamgha allegedly drew a black semiautomatic handgun from his pocket and fired at Williams at least twice. One witness later told investigators that the dispute involved a small amount of money, although public accounts did not specify the amount.
Identifying the shooter took considerably longer than establishing what had happened. Detectives eventually compared a booking photograph of Yamgha with the individual captured on the station’s surveillance system and concluded that they matched. Investigators also found the woman who had accompanied him into the station. She told authorities that she had been dating Yamgha at the time, identified herself in the surveillance footage and confirmed her recollection of the confrontation and shooting. A second witness identified Yamgha as well. That witness reportedly knew him as “Ten,” said the confrontation concerned a small amount of money, and told investigators that he had seen Yamgha with a firearm earlier, although that witness did not personally see the gunfire itself. Together, the surveillance evidence, witness identifications and medical findings formed the basis of the eventual prosecution.
Nearly three years passed before prosecutors formally charged Yamgha. On December 4, 2023, the Hennepin County case was filed charging him with second-degree murder in Williams’s death. By then, authorities did not have to locate him on the street: Yamgha was already incarcerated in Minnesota on unrelated drug- and weapon-related offenses, with reporting at the time placing him at the Faribault state prison for a drug conviction. Consequently, the homicide charge came while he was already in state custody rather than through a newly reported arrest after the charge was announced. Public reporting identifies Yamgha as the sole person charged with firing the fatal shots; the woman who accompanied him was treated as a witness, and no second shooter or co-defendant was reported in the homicide prosecution.
The case ultimately did not proceed to a jury trial. In October 2024, Yamgha pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree unintentional murder, bringing the prosecution close to a conclusion almost four years after Williams was killed. On November 15, 2024, Judge Paul Scoggin imposed a 240-month prison sentence, equivalent to 20 years, and awarded Yamgha approximately three years and nine months of credit for time already served. The sentence transformed a case that had begun with an unidentified shooter fleeing a light-rail station into a conviction supported by surveillance footage, witness identifications and Yamgha’s eventual guilty plea. Minnesota Department of Corrections records now identify homicide as Yamgha’s highest-ranked offense under Hennepin County court file 27-CR-23-25708 and list him as incarcerated at MCF-Rush City.
