Somali man sentenced to life in prison in 2011 killing of 4 people in North Dakota

MINOT, N.D. — A Somali national was sentenced to life in prison Tuesday for killing the mother of his child and three other people in North Dakota two years ago.

Omar Mohamed Kalmio, 28, declined to comment following the 30-minute sentencing hearing, the Minot Daily News reported (http://bit.ly/ZxYxSA ). Judge Douglas Mattson sentenced Kalmio to four consecutive terms of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

 

 

Kalmio was convicted of fatally shooting 19-year-old Sabrina Zephier on Jan. 28, 2011, at her Minot home. Authorities said he then killed her 13-year-old brother, Dillon Zephier; her mother Jolene Zephier, 38; and Jolene’s 22-year-old boyfriend, Jeremy Longie, at the mother’s nearby mobile home. The baby girl was found unharmed in Sabrina Zephier’s home. They were members of the Yankton Sioux Tribe.

Kalmio, who had a history of violent crime, was working in North Dakota’s oil patch at the time of the killings and said he was in the U.S. under political asylum.

According to court documents, a witness said Kalmio and Zephier argued days before she was found dead. Kalmio’s co-workers at an oil rig site near Williston claimed he had told them Zephier purposely became pregnant and that she had ruined his life. Authorities said Kalmio described injuries to Zephier that had not been publicly disclosed.

Kalmio and a group of other Somali men were accused of attacking a man in Minneapolis in January 2006, and Kalmio stabbed him three times in the back with a knife. He was convicted of second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and sentenced to about a year in prison. Kalmio also was convicted of theft in 2006, and ordered to pay a fine.

Multiple slayings are virtually unheard of in North Dakota, which had only 10 murders and non-negligent homicides in all of 2010 and 24 homicides the next year, according to data compiled by the FBI.

 

The Associated Press.