ST. PAUL
There were no winners in the courtroom when Anthony Martin Ramos was sentenced Friday to four years in prison for robbing and terrorizing a 16-year-old autistic boy in St. Paul.
Ramos, 25, sobbed as he apologized to the boy and his family, but he begged for help -- instead of prison -- for himself.
"I didn't want to hurt anybody," said Ramos, who suffered a traumatic brain injury at age 13 when an adult gave him methamphetamine and he overdosed.
His attorney, Marcus Almon, asked the judge for probation instead of prison time.
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Ramos was the "ringleader" of five people, including two juveniles, who attacked the boy Dec. 23. They stalked him at a Cub Foods store in Sun Ray Shopping Center. One person asked him if he wanted to "hang out," and the group lured him to a deserted space near Conway Recreation Center.
Once there, they pushed him into the snow, handcuffed him, beat him, robbed him and shot him in the face with a BB gun.
Ramos pleaded guilty April 5 to first-degree aggravated robbery and kidnapping.
Ramsey County District Judge Salvador Rosas ordered him to serve four years in prison, saying, "I wish there was a place I could send you that would keep you safe, that would keep our community safe, and that would help you."
The victim was in court with his mother. Prosecutor Elizabeth Lamin read a letter the teen wrote to the judge.
He said the incident occurred on a nice winter day as he set out for the store.
"I saw Mike (one of the juvenile assailants) and these weird people," he said. "I walked around them because I felt scared. Mike used to live in my apartment building and was mean to me.
"... Mike said 'Let's hang out' and he brought me to these group of people. They told me to go to the park. At the park they surrounded me and started attacking me and robbing me with the gun ...
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"They let me go and told me, 'If you ever told anybody, we will kill you and your family.' They also made me run in circles and laughed. I was so scared and crying. I was bleeding all over my face."
The group took the boy's CD player, a digital camera, a cellphone and $8 from his wallet, which, Ramos said at his plea hearing, they split among the five of them.
The juvenile defendants have been sentenced. Juvenile court records are not public.
In a written motion to the court, Almon said Ramos has an IQ of 74, cannot care for himself and has been in and out of treatment facilities since he suffered the brain injury.
He was civilly committed and lived in a foster home that specialized in patients with traumatic brain injuries until August 2010.
The commitment period ended. The attack on the autistic boy happened just a few months later.
Co-defendant Tiffany Clock, who lived at the foster home with Ramos, is to appear for a pretrial hearing May 31. The other adult defendant, Trenton Eugene Johnson, was found incompetent to stand trial.
Almon said he respected the judge's decision.
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"Unfortunately, we had a case of the mentally ill versus the mentally ill," Almon said. "Until we figure this out, we're just going to be warehousing people with mental illness in prisons."
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
