LANSING — A long-running court saga involving a man who was shot by police outside an East Lansing store in 2022 is finally over.
DeAnthony VanAtten learned his punishment on Wednesday, Oct. 12. He received a minimum of three years in prison for carrying a concealed weapon and the mandatory two years for felony firearm possession. The CCW sentence is consecutive to the felony firearm sentence, so VanAtten will have to serve a minimum of five years in that case, minus the time he’s already spent in custody.
VanAtten, now 23, was shot by East Lansing police in April 2022 after someone reported seeing a masked man run into the Meijer store on Lake Lansing Road with a gun. VanAtten ran from officers who tried to stop him in the store and parking lot, and he was hit by two rounds fired by police.
The officers later were cleared of wrongdoing, and VanAtten was charged with seven felony counts and one misdemeanor count.
The case was essentially gutted in May 2024, when Aquilina granted a motion to suppress the firearm evidence, ruling the officers didn’t have adequate grounds to stop VanAtten. But the state Court of Appeals overturned that ruling, and the state Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal.
VanAtten was still awaiting trial in that case when he was charged in connection with a domestic incident in Lansing in early 2025. That case, a related weapons case and the case stemming from the police shooting were resolved with a plea deal in September, with the weapons case to be dismissed.
The state Attorney General’s Office prosecuted the 2022 case, and the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office handled the others.
A sentence agreement called for VanAtten to get a minimum of five years in prison in both the 2025 domestic assault and 2022 shooting cases, with the sentences running concurrently.
But on Wednesday, the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office argued the sentence agreement was void because VanAtten repeatedly violated court orders by trying to contact the victim in the domestic incident from the jail.
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Aquilina handed down the negotiated sentence in the shooting case but slightly exceeded it in the domestic assault case, giving VanAtten 70 months in prison for interfering with a crime report. She said VanAtten had been charged with numerous felony and misdemeanor crimes in his relatively short life.
The prosecutor’s office had asked for sentences adding up to a minimum of 10 years.
“I did you a favor,” Aquilina told VanAtten. “If you are ever in front of me again, it will not go so well, sir.”
Contact Ken Palmer at kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on X @KBPalm_lsj.
This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Man shot by East Lansing police outside Meijer store gets prison sentences
Reporting by Ken Palmer, Lansing State Journal / Lansing State Journal
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