11 Buchanan Street Duluth, MN 55802 - The sentencing judge and the chief public defender wanted Rico Burness-El to understand the terror he inflicted on a restaurant manager by stalking her with a 12-inch kitchen knife and causing such trauma that she stepped down from her management position.
Judge Eric Hylden told Burness-El that he wasn’t sure that his apology was sufficient. Public defender Fred Friedman told his client of the pain he had caused the young woman. The defendant dropped out of school in the eighth grade, can’t read and has a lengthy history of mental illness. Friedman had to tell him how his crime had impacted the woman.
“I’m sorry what happened. I ask for forgiveness,” Burness-El said before being sentenced to more than nine years in prison. “Hopefully I can get on the right track. … I ask for forgiveness.”
Burness-El pleaded guilty last month to first-degree aggravated robbery for robbing a Little Angie’s Cantina employee at knifepoint in September as a woman employee was closing the restaurant. He also pleaded guilty to trying to use a forged check that he had stolen that same day from a purse in the Ordean Building in downtown Duluth.
Hylden sentenced Burness-El to 111 months in prison for the first-degree aggravated robbery conviction and for committing the crime while on parole in Wisconsin. He was sentenced to 24 months in prison for the check forgery and for committing the crime while on parole in Wisconsin. The sentences are to be served at the same time.
“The robbery that occurred on that September evening has impacted me with an emotional scar that I will wear for the rest of my life,” the woman wrote in her victim-impact statement. “Nightmares recreating the memory of him walking towards me as my body froze while he lifted up the 12-inch knife, holding the white handle while pointing the knife tip at my chest threatening my life. That night, I had to honestly contemplate the potential of never walking out of that office again. I was forced to consider the chilling prospective (sic) that I may be raped, stabbed or murdered by this man.”
The woman said she feared closing the restaurant alone after the incident and stepped down from the management position she had held for four years.
St. Louis County prosecutor Kristen Swanson said the defendant has 14 convictions, including aggravated robbery, robbery with force, burglary, felony theft, sale of marijuana and terroristic threats in St. Louis, Douglas, Hennepin and Ramsey counties and in Missouri.
According to the criminal complaint, on Sept. 18 Burness-El shut and locked the door behind him near closing time at Little Angie’s, brandished a knife, pushed the employee, and swore at and threatened to cut her.
The woman backed out of his way while Burness-El took cash from the tills and safe and stuffed the money into his hooded sweatshirt and into a brown item he carried in his hand.
The employee saw a knife sticking out of his pants pocket, grabbed it and told him to get out of the office. She then rushed past the suspect, unlocked the door and ran toward the front of the restaurant while another employee called 911. Duluth police squads responded to the area and found Burness-El near another restaurant. He matched the description the Little Angie’s employee gave of the man who robbed Little Angie’s.
An officer conducted a pat-down search for weapons on Burness-El. A rectangular object containing money was found in his sock. A total of $1,316 in cash was found on the suspect.
In 2004, Burness-El was sentenced in Douglas County Circuit Court to five years in prison for a 2002 robbery of Charter Communications’ Superior office. In that case, he repeatedly slapped a female cashier-receptionist and took more than $1,200 in cash.
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