St. Louis Park Teen Sentenced to Life in Prison

Michael Richard Swanson, an 18-year-old from St. Louis Park, was sentenced to life in prison Thursday for murdering an Iowa store clerk last November, according to the Des Moines Register.

Swanson also pleaded guilty to murdering a second Iowa store clerk. Swanson shot the two clerks—Vicky Bowman-Hall, 47, and Sheila Myers, 61—in separate armed robberies on Nov. 15, when he was still 17, after fleeing from his St. Louis Park home in his mother's vehicle. Police believe that both clerks complied with his demands for cash and cigarettes, but he shot them anyway to keep the clerks from calling the police.

"Cold-blooded murder,” District Judge Thomas Bice said four times during his speech, the Register reports. “And all of it for $31 and a few cigarettes.

“You are dangerous. You are unpredictable. And there is no place for you in an open law-abiding society,” Bice added. “The hurt that you brought to the family of Sheila Myers is beyond description. It will take generations before those scars close.”

Swanson had enrolled at St. Louis Park High School on Nov. 8,  just five days after being released from the Hennepin County Home School, a residential treatment center for adolescent offenders. He had been sentenced there in the summer for stealing a vehicle in St. Louis Park and then crashing it while drunk.

According to city records, police had visited the Swanson family home 10 times since 2005, including five times during 2010. Those calls involved reports of theft, assault, a missing person, vehicle theft, a weapons violation and shots fired.