Buffalo Man Among 2 Charged After Newport Shooting, Attempted Robbery

NEWPORT, MN — A Buffalo man is one of two people facing several felony charges after police said they shot a woman while trying to rob her earlier this month in her Newport apartment.

Justus Wright, 37, of Buffalo, and Donald Ealey, 31, of St. Paul, were each charged last week with first-degree assault, first-degree aggravated robbery and second-degree firearm assault, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said Tuesday.

Both were being held Tuesday at the Washington County Jail in Stillwater in lieu of $400,000 bail, according to authorities.

Deputies were called just after 7 a.m. May 14 to an apartment complex in the 1700 block of Eighth Avenue in Newport after a woman was shot in the abdomen during an attempted robbery, police said.

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Deputies and other officers treated the woman at her apartment before she was taken to a hospital, where she “immediately underwent surgery for serious, life-threatening injuries,” the sheriff’s office said.

The woman remained in the hospital Tuesday in serious but stable condition, police said.

A man who lives at the apartment told police he let Wright and Ealey inside on the morning of May 14 because he thought he knew them, the sheriff’s office said in a news release.

One of the men brandished a large handgun and put it to the resident's head, then shot the woman who lived at the apartment as she approached them, police said. She retreated to the bathroom while the two men ransacked the apartment, stealing money, a cell phone and a BB gun, police said.

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The man who lived there was hit in the head with the butt of the handgun before the two men left, according to the sheriff’s office.

Police said they identified Wright as a suspect in the shooting “within hours” and he was arrested at his home in Buffalo later that day. Ealey was arrested several days later after police used traffic cameras to track the shooter’s vehicle from the apartment complex to his home in St. Paul, officials said in the news release.

Wright and Ealey are due to next appear in court in early June, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office said.

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