A Minneapolis man who murdered a 32-year-old father in front of his children last summer will spend the rest of his life in prison.
The sentence came Tuesday in Hennepin County District Court about two weeks after a jury convicted James Woodard of first-degree murder without the possibility of parole in the death of Divittin Hoskins, according to the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office.
Woodard, 33, hid next to a garage on the 1600 block of Plymouth Avenue North in Minneapolis as he waited for Hoskins to pull into a parking lot behind an apartment building the evening of July 28, 2017, authorities say.
Hoskins had just climbed out of his car and was walking toward the building with his children when Woodard ran up behind him and shot him in the head.
Another man at the scene, Elbert Robinson, Jr., appeared to signal to Woodward that Hoskins had arrived before the shooting took place.
Woodard fled after firing the single shot.
Hennepin County District Judge Kathryn Quaintance called the murder “one of the most gratuitous acts of violence” she’d seen in her more than 25 years working in the criminal justice system.
Woodard’s actions were “heartless and cold-blooded,” she said at his sentencing hearing, adding that the traumatic event would impact Hoskins’ children for the rest of their life.
Hoskins’ mother read an impact statement at the hearing about what it was like to lose her son and a victim’s advocate read a statement from Hoskins’ 11-year-old daughter.
Woodard did not address the court.
Robinson pleaded guilty to aiding an offender in the case and is scheduled to be sentenced in late November.