Bobbi Martin, Avontae King’s former girlfriend and the mother of his two children, told a Dakota County courtroom Friday that their son, Giovanni, then 4 years old, saw his father murdered last year outside their South St. Paul home. King, 26, had gone outside to go after Andrew Michael Fisher, who had grabbed a bag of marijuana off King’s table and ran out of the home.
Fisher turned around and fired once, hitting King in the chest. Fisher and his alleged accomplice sped away. Giovanni watched it unfold from a window of the home.
“I’m not sure if either party involved ever noticed him standing in the window,” Martin said. “I find myself lying up at night praying that Avontae didn’t see him standing there, either.” She said the boy spent the weeks after his father’s Nov.
24 killing reenacting “to everyone around him the way his father’s body dropped to the ground.” Fisher was given just shy of 13 years in prison for the killing. The length of the sentence, handed down by Dakota County District Judge Timothy McManus, was part of Fisher’s plea deal he reached with prosecutors in May.
Fisher, 20, of Cambridge, pleaded guilty to second-degree unintentional homicide while committing a felony, admitting at the May 14 plea hearing that he went to King’s home with the intent of robbing him of his marijuana. “The choices that were made that evening taught our children how cold and cruel this world can be,” Martin said. She said Giovanni and his brother, .