A man once charged with murdering a Little Canada father inside his own pickup truck walked out of a Ramsey County courtroom with a five-year prison sentence — not for homicide, but for illegally possessing a firearm. Kastedell Lamarr Thomas Jr. pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm by an ineligible person after prosecutors dismissed two counts of second-degree murder tied to the October 2024 shooting death of 45-year-old Nicholas Sletten.
The case, first detailed by the Pioneer Press, traces back to the night of October 14, 2024, when St. Paul officers were sent to Jackson Street and Wheelock Parkway around 9:25 p.m. after 911 callers reported a shooting. Sletten was found lying in the boulevard and later died at Regions Hospital. Surveillance video showed five men had gotten into Sletten's Chevrolet Silverado before the shooting, and two men who had been with him told police, per the criminal complaint, that Thomas shot Sletten with an AK-47-style gun after telling him not to move or reach for anything. Sletten died after being shot in the back.
Investigators believed the encounter began as a robbery attempt. Two of Sletten's relatives told police he grew and sold marijuana, and a witness said, per the criminal complaint, that the suspects appeared to be trying to rob Sletten for marijuana or pills. Phone location data placed Sletten's truck at a Speedway gas station on Rice Street in Roseville between 9:11 and 9:20 p.m. that night, shortly before the fatal encounter in St. Paul's North End.
A Case Built on Contested Witness Accounts
The Ramsey County Attorney's Office charged Thomas with one intentional and one unintentional count of second-degree murder, and he was jailed on $2.5 million bail after his arrest on January 28, 2025. That arrest came during Operation Cold Front, a three-month multi-agency sweep in which Thomas was one of 12 people arrested, according to Bring Me The News. The operation combined the St. Paul Police Department's Narcotics, Gang, Criminal Investigations, and Special Investigations units with the Ramsey County Violent Crimes Enforcement Team, and it took shape amid a fentanyl crisis that claimed 180 lives in Ramsey County in 2023.
Thomas pleaded not guilty to the murder charges and requested a bench trial. His defense team filed a memo in July arguing the charges should be dismissed for lack of probable cause, contending Thomas had been charged after what the filing called biased and problematic interviews with the two men who implicated him, per the court document. The defense memo also pointed to forensic analyses with recordkeeping gaps and contamination errors, and cited a shooting reconstruction that found Thomas was the least likely of the passengers to have been the shooter.
Investigators had matched fingerprints on the Silverado's outside rear door and window to Thomas as recently as November 2025. Sletten's pickup was found with all four doors ajar. Ultimately, the Ramsey County Attorney's Office said the evidentiary issues did not meet the threshold for charging any of the other individuals in the truck, and none of the other passengers were charged with homicide-related offenses.
A Plea Deal and an Apology
In exchange for Thomas pleading guilty to firearm possession, prosecutors dismissed both murder charges. Thomas admitted possessing a firearm in Ramsey County — though not the gun found inside the truck — and a witness statement said Thomas had pulled a gun inside the Silverado. Because Minnesota's mandatory-minimum sentencing law for prohibited possessors under Minnesota Statutes § 624.713 and § 609.11 leaves courts with no authority to stay or reduce the punishment, according to FindLaw, Thomas was sentenced to the minimum mandatory five-year prison term, with credit for 581 days already served in custody.
Thomas apologized in court for what happened to Sletten and his family. Lauri Traub, identified in the case, said Thomas was not the shooter. Calvin Menge said Sletten lost his life because young men may have wanted something they did not want to pay for, and that Thomas was present when a shot was fired and provided no life-saving assistance. Alyssa Arcand said St. Paul police homicide investigators worked on the case diligently, and St. Paul police defended their homicide investigators' work amid the case's collapse. The Ramsey County Attorney's Office said the investigation remains open and that it will bring charges against others if new information establishes probable cause for a felony offense.
Part of a Broader Shift in St. Paul Violence
Sletten's death was the third homicide in St. Paul over a four-day span in October 2024, a stretch that prompted St. Paul Police Chief Axel Henry to say publicly that solving these murders is not and is never going to be the answer, and that the city has to prevent them from happening in the first place, according to CBS News. The case also wasn't Thomas's first brush with a major violent felony charge in Ramsey County — he had previously been charged with second-degree murder in the May 2024 fatal shooting of 23-year-old Kevon Ishmel Ewing at the METRO Green Line's Dale Street Station, a case in which transit police used light rail surveillance footage to identify suspects, per KARE 11.
St. Paul's homicide numbers have shifted dramatically since Sletten was killed. The city recorded 15 homicides in 2025, down sharply from 33 in 2024 and marking its lowest annual total since 2013, Hoodline previously reported. Officials have credited part of that decline to the department's Non-Fatal Shooting Unit, established in January 2024 with $1.7 million in state funding, which helped lift the city's non-fatal shooting clearance rate from 37% in 2023 to 71% in 2025, according to MPR News. The unit applies homicide-level forensic resources to non-fatal shootings in an effort to head off retaliatory violence before it turns deadly.
For now, Sletten's family is left with a murder case that never reached trial and a gun conviction that guarantees five years behind bars regardless of who else was in the truck that night. The Ramsey County Attorney's Office has left the door open to future charges, but as of the sentencing, Thomas remains the only person held criminally responsible for a shooting that investigators say involved at least five people.
