A 20-year-old Minnesota man will serve less than six months behind bars for heinous attacks on a pair of girls aged four and nine.
On Monday, Mohamed Bakari Shei was sentenced to spend 176 days incarcerated in the Olmsted County Adult Detention Center on two charges of inappropriate contact with persons under 13. The shocking sentence, as reported by local outlet KIMT, followed an Alford plea entered in December.
This is a mechanism used to maintain the defendant’s plea of innocence while agreeing that the evidence in the case would lead to a jury conviction.
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The outlet reported that Shei will submit to 30 years of supervised probation and perform 200 hours of community service.
This shockingly lenient sentence followed his guilty plea to attacking a nine-year-old girl multiple times starting on Mother’s Day 2018. He also pled guilty to charges involving a girl approximately four or five years old, according to the Post Bulletin.
The two cases resulted in three felony first-degree criminal conduct charges. With the plea deal, Shei will not serve even one day in a prison. He received a stay of adjudication, and two of the three charges were dismissed.
Further, if he completes his probation, all charges will be dismissed and removed from his criminal record.
Shei was present before District Judge Jacob Allen Monday for his sentencing hearing. Several family members of the victims spoke to the court about how his actions affected them.
One of the defendant’s survivors addressed the court Monday. Fighting back tears, the minor said “there is no moving no or getting over it. I’ve tried.” She burst out crying after courageously making her statement.
One family member described one of the victims as a ‘bubbly girl” who became withdrawn following the multiple attacks. The speaker told Shei that “someday you will have to answer for this egregious act against a child.”
The defendant was 15 and 16 years old when the attacks occurred and faced charges as a juvenile in 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the charges back to where they had to be refiled. It was soon afterward that a plea deal with the accused was reached.
With good behavior, Shei will serve a maximum of 116 days in the detention center. He will not be required to register as an offender.
