A McLean County jury convicted a Minnesota man Thursday of murder in the death of a 26-year-old Bloomington man in 2021.
Kentrell Brown, 21, was found guilty of killing Natwan Nash in the shooting in Bloomington. The victim was found unresponsive with 10 gunshot wounds in his apartment in the 2400 block of Clearwater Avenue. Brown faces 20 to 60 years in prison.
Two years after the 2021 death, Brown was charged with Nash’s murder while he was jailed on unrelated offenses in Rochester, Minnesota. Shortly after the Bloomington shooting, Brown asked his mother to come from Minnesota to pick him up at his grandmother’s apartment in Bloomington.
In her closing arguments Thursday, assistant state’s attorney Mary Lawson told jurors that Nash made his living as a marijuana dealer, a decision “that cost him his life.” In the hours before Nash’s bullet-riddled body was found by a friend who had gone to check on him, he made several drug deals on March 6, 2021, said the prosecutor.
Police did not receive reports of gunfire, but investigators later located security camera footage from a nearby residence that picked up the sound of 11 gunshots at 12:28 a.m. on March 7 — around the time Nash is believed to have been shot.
Other evidence presented by the state included security camera images of Nash and Brown making separate visits to an east side convenience store before the shooting. Brown is seen purchasing a drink and cigars. Brown’s drink bottle was found at the crime scene, but a bottle of liquor and lottery tickets bought by Nash were missing, said Lawson.
Left behind during what authorities consider a drug-related robbery was a large stack of cash in Nash’s apartment. Police did not find a large black trash bag containing marijuana the victim sometimes showed off to customers.
The state contends Brown was the last person to have contact with Nash when he visited the apartment following a phone call at 12:26 a.m. Video of Brown after the incident shows him carrying a large object the state suggested was the trash bag of marijuana.
The prosecutor and assistant public defender Mackenzie Frizzell disagreed about the significance of a stain found on a pair of black shoes police believe the killer was wearing during the robbery. Lawson said state forensic scientists could not rule out blood as the source of the stain during a screening test for DNA.
In her closing remarks Frizzell suggested the dark-colored stain could be any substance, including food, on the shoes allegedly worn by Brown, a former restaurant worker.
Brown’s lawyer argued Nash was “reckless and cavalier,” and operated a high-risk business that attracted enemies.
“He lived a lifestyle that he did not try to hide from the public,” said Frizzell.
The public defender also took issue with the Bloomington police investigation, saying police witnesses seemed to suffer memory lapses during her questioning of them at the trial, and alleged some interviews were not recorded. Frizzell noted the woman who found Nash’s body removed a cell phone from the apartment before police arrived and that several other people were in the crime scene area.
“You should have questions. It’s okay to have questions. It’s okay to have doubt,” Frizzell told the jury of three women and nine men.
In her rebuttal to Frizzell’s accusations about police, Lawson said investigators were “nothing but thorough” during the two-year probe that led to Brown's arrest.
Brown was being held in Minnesota on charges related to a gas station robbery and a drug transaction in which a BB gun was fired multiple times.
The state played video during the trial of Brown’s interview by Minnesota police in which he denied knowing Nash. The video showed Brown alone in the interview room at one point, pacing as he uttered, ”Man, I apologize.”
Brown’s statement in the interview room “is as close as you’re going to get to a confession,” Lawson told jurors.
Sentencing is set for April 1.
