Moments after being sentenced to 60 months in prison in Hennepin County District Court, one man decided to make a run for it.
Jerel Valdez Martin, 35, of North St. Paul is at large after he tussled with sheriff’s deputies, escaped the courtroom and fled down the stairs and out the doors of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis on Tuesday morning.
He was moving so quickly, he ran out of his shoes. His shirt came off somewhere in the melee.
Martin now has a warrant out for his arrest. The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office is asking for the public’s help in tracking him down.
He was supposed to be sentenced to 60 months in prison on Tuesday for illegal possession of a firearm, the latest in a long line of criminal activity by Martin dating to a juvenile conviction of aggravated first-degree robbery in 2005, when he was 15.
In this case, he was arrested with a group of people in a car, including an infant, after stealing a 9 mm handgun magazine and a box of ammo off the shelf at Fleet Farm in 2024. The car allegedly was filled with drugs, including fentanyl and marijuana — much of it stuffed in the underwear and bra of one of the female passengers.
Martin was found guilty of being a prohibited person in possession of ammunition by Judge Paul Scoggin after he requested a court trial instead of a jury trial.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement that District Judge Michael Burns had lawyers approach his bench during Martin’s sentencing when a woman in the courtroom handed Martin a cellphone.
