ST. LOUIS — An Alton man will spend nearly three decades behind bars for the assault and robbery of one woman and the murder of another minutes apart in St. Louis.
Deionate Robertson, 26, was sentenced Friday to 28 years in prison on a count of second-degree murder in the 2020 death of Deanna Beckum, along with one count each of robbery and armed criminal action.
The crimes happened on the evening of Nov. 30, 2020, in the city's Kingsway West neighborhood.
According to the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office, a 44-year-old woman was walking near Union Boulevard and Martin Luther King Drive when a man in a green Mercury Cougar drove by and solicited her for sex.
She refused, and the man pistol-whipped her and robbed her of $30. She called police to report the incident.
When she arrived at her nearby home on Paulian Place a few minutes later, she saw the same green Mercury Cougar parked in the alley behind her home. She called police again; while on the phone with them, she heard two gunshots.
Officers responded to meet with the victim. While searching the area near the car, they saw Robertson, who matched the victim's description of her assailant, coming out of a rear basement stairwell of a building on the 5200 block of Paulian Place.
Roberston ran, but he was caught after a brief pursuit and taken into custody.
Police retraced Robertson's path and found a semi-automatic pistol. An officer entered the basement Robertson came out from and found Beckum, 34, lying on the floor with two gunshot wounds to the back of her head.
Police matched Robertson's DNA to DNA found on Beckum, and the robbery victim identified him as the man who accosted her.
Robertson was initially charged with first-degree murder, along with an additional count of armed criminal action, but pleaded down to lesser charges ahead of a jury trial that was scheduled for Nov. 27.
