Man who shot at people outside St. Paul Target not guilty due to mental illness

A man who fired several gunshots in the parking lot of a St. Paul Target store in 2022 and said he was hearing voices has been found not guilty by reason of mental illness.

Judge Adam Yang submitted his finding earlier this week, acquitting 38-year-old Fa Lee of all six counts of attempted murder due to cognitive impairment.

The charges stem from an incident in September 2022.

St. Paul police officers in the Battle Creek neighborhood were called to the Target store on Suburban Avenue shortly before 2 p.m. and were told by three men that they were by a cart return when a man in a car pulled up and started shooting. Fortunately, they were able to run away and weren’t hurt.

Officers found 12 spent casings in the parking lot and used surveillance video to find Lee. After he was arrested, he told officers that he fired the shots because his “wife’s voice in his head” told him one of the three men he shot at was the person who stabbed her. However, Lee isn’t married, didn’t have a girlfriend, and the woman he said was his girlfriend hadn’t been hurt and wasn’t even in the state, court documents state.

Yang ruled that Lee was guilty of the charges based on the evidence but, based on psychological evaluations, “he was motivated by auditory hallucinations and paranoid beliefs such that he did not recognize his actions were wrong” and couldn’t control himself.