Wife, mother, sister, cousin, stepfather, father, mentor, customer — one after the next, for more than an hour, family and friends of Lashay Whittaker took the stand inside a Ramsey County courtroom Wednesday to talk about the impact of his death on their lives.
Ankquinet “Lashay” Whittaker often sleeps with her daughters now because she can’t bear the separation anxiety that floods her when she’s alone in the bed she shared for more than a decade with her husband.
He was her partner in parenting, and her great love, she told the court. He made their daughters’ breakfasts and lunches, and drove them to school. They baked cakes together, barbecued, attended their girls’ dance recitals, carved pumpkins.
She cried as she listed off the memories.
“I have been forced to live a new life. A life I don’t want to live. But every day, I get up and live that life for my babies,” she said.
Her husband of nearly 15 years was on his way home from his job as a barber in St. Paul last April 20 when Shawn Konder smashed into his vehicle while driving some 80 mph down a Frogtown alley. Konder, 27, was drunk and fleeing police at the time.
Officers pursued him in connection with a terroristic threats call that involved Konder reportedly threatening a 14-year-old with a machete.
The impact of the collision sent Whittaker’s 2000 Nissan Maxima into a garage, causing the structure to collapse on a portion of his vehicle. The front wheels and engine component of the Maxima were sheared off, and Whittaker had to be extricated. The 41-year-old was pronounced dead shortly afterward at a hospital.
Konder’s sentencing hearing Wednesday arrived about three months after he pleaded guilty to one count of fleeing an officer in a motor vehicle and causing death.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison per the terms of his plea agreement. The agreement included dismissing charges of third-degree murder and criminal vehicular homicide.
Whittaker’s mother, Marlene Whittaker, recalled what it was like to get the phone call from her daughter the day of the crash. She had to identify her son’s body, and pick out his casket.
He grew up going to summer camps and playing sports, she said. He was the quintessential family man, and became a doting husband and father to his two daughters.
She doesn’t like thinking about her big-hearted, easy-to-laugh son dying in pain and alone.
“He was somebody,” she said during the hearing. “He was loved and he was needed.”
Other loved ones recalled “laugh(ing) until (they) cried” with Whittaker inside his Selby Avenue barbershop, the way he answered phone calls with a consistent, “Wad up,” how he gave their kids quarters to buy candy out of vending machines, his love for barbecue, camping and fishing.
His stepfather shared memories of giving Whittaker “bathroom haircuts” when he was a kid to “keep him looking fresh.”
“He always knew that when you look good, you feel good,” Anthony Corbin told the court, adding that he thinks that’s what drove Whittaker to become a barber.
“Because he wanted to make people feel good,” he said.
Some also expressed anger at Konder for what they described as a “senseless,” “selfless” and “reckless decision.”
Tyrone Terrill, chair of the St. Paul African American Leadership Council and a regular at Whittaker’s barbershop, was among them.
“You took more than a barber,” he said to Konder. “You took more than a husband … a brother, a son. … You ripped a heart out of a community.”
“I hope you can never shut your eyes and not see Lashay Whittaker.”
Konder stood silently in his orange jumpsuit throughout the proceeding. He apologized when it was finally his turn to speak.
“There will never be any words to make these guys understand my remorse,” he said. “I understand that forgiveness might come; it might not. … But I’d like it to be known that I do feel deep remorse.”