Another deadly crime: St. Paul man on parole for 2008 murder charged by warrant in shooting death of his pregnant wife

A St. Paul man on parole for a 2008 murder has now been charged by warrant in a deadly shooting on Oct. 19 that killed his pregnant wife and a nearby carjacking and shooting that happened less a short time later.

36-year-old Mychel Allen Stowers has been charged with second-degree murder, second-degree murder of an unborn child, two counts of first-degree carjacking and two counts of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon.

RELATED: Saturday night homicide may be related to carjacking shooting, St. Paul police say

According to the criminal complaint, officers were called to the 100 block of Sycamore Street East around 9:08 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 19, for a shooting in an apartment.

When they arrived, officers said they noticed gun residue in the air when they went into the apartment. Inside, they found a woman, later identified as Damara Alexis Stowers, 35, lying on the floor in a bedroom and found five shell casings on the floor. She was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics a short time later, charges say.

Prosecutors told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS the woman was the suspect’s wife. Court records show that they had filed for divorce, but it had not been finalized.

Officers also found ultrasound photos and a loaded handgun magazine elsewhere in the apartment.

Charges say the apartment building owner talked to officers and told them that Mychel was living with Damara but was in the process of being evicted because he was not on the lease.

Six minutes after the call for the apartment shooting, the complaint says officers responded to a call for nearby carjacking on the 90 block of Acker Street, only 0.1 miles from the apartment building, where they found a man on the ground with a gunshot wound to his leg. The man was taken to the hospital with a broken femur. His car had also been stolen.

Another man had been with the shooting victim at the time of the crime and told officers that the suspect had also tried to shoot him but had missed. He then ran home, but the suspect stole the victim’s Audi, which his phone was in, as the men had gone to the store together, the court document says.

The victim, while talking to officers at the hospital, said the Audi had been running with his keys inside as he went to throw trash away in the parking lot. He was smoking a cigarette when a heavyset Black man, later identified as Mychel, said something to the victim that he didn’t understand due to a language barrier and then shot him. He said that the suspect left the scene but then came back and stole his car, the charges say.

Officers found two casings at the scene.

Surveillance video from a nearby church corroborated what the victim said happened, showing a person approaching the victim, who was standing next to his car, pointing something at him, a flash and then the victim dropped to the ground. It also showed Mychel running away but then returning and driving off in the Audi. On audio from a video, two gunshots could be heard.

The complaint says that Mychel called the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office saying he wanted to turn himself in for having just shot a man on Acker Street, but as of Oct. 25, has not done so yet, and the charges include a warrant for his arrest.

The charges say Mychel had been let out on parole from prison on March 28 for the killing of a man in 2008. Department of Corrections information said he was living in a halfway house on work release and had been granted a pass to visit Damara at her residence.