Man Sentenced for Killing Ex and Her New Partner in Shotgun Attack

A Minnesota man has been sentenced to prison after breaking into his former girlfriend’s home and fatally shooting her and her new boyfriend with a shotgun while they were inside.

“I truly am sorry,” Randy Zimmerman, 46, said Monday before receiving two consecutive life sentences for the November 2025 murders of Tabitha Trescott, 32, and Justin Reinarts, 50, local CBS affiliate KEYC reported.

Zimmerman pleaded guilty in August to two counts of first-degree murder, including murder with intent while committing a felony and murder while committing domestic abuse with a past pattern of abuse. Prosecutors dropped the premeditated murder charges as part of the plea agreement.

“A lot of weight is off of our family’s shoulders. We can sleep knowing that justice has been served,” Terri Smith, Trescott’s mother, told KEYC.

Zimmerman shot Trescott and Reinarts at about 4:20 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2025. Brown County authorities received a 911 call from one of Trescott’s two children, who reported that his mother’s former boyfriend had broken into the house and shot her, according to the sheriff’s office press release.

Investigators found two spent shotgun shells in the upstairs bedroom where the couple was killed. Both victims died from gunshot wounds to the head. Several children were inside the home at the time of the shooting.

SEE ALSO: Stunna Girl Dog Cage Kidnapping Case: What Happened To Her- Family And ethnicity – NewsFinale

“I gave you a chance,” Zimmerman allegedly told Trescott immediately before opening fire, according to her son’s account in a criminal complaint obtained by Minnesota NBC affiliate KARE.

The child said he had been asleep when he woke to someone shouting profanities inside the home. When he went to investigate, Zimmerman confronted him in the hallway outside his bedroom and allegedly pointed a shotgun at him while ordering him back into the room.

After the shootings, Zimmerman fled the Brown County home and drove into Iowa. During a high-speed pursuit there, he allegedly fired at a sheriff’s deputy. “He pulled a shotgun out of the window during the chase and fired one shot backwards at our deputy,” Louisa County Sheriff Brandon Marquardt told Law&Crime last year.

Iowa officers arrested Zimmerman after using a maneuver to force his vehicle into a ditch and chasing him through a field, police said. “He was chased … and tasered,” Marquardt said.

Zimmerman remained at large for approximately 12 hours before authorities apprehended him in Louisa County, Iowa.

The court credited Zimmerman with 345 days he had already spent in custody.

“If you’re in this kind of situation, please don’t think you can ever change that person, because you cannot,” Smith told KEYC. “No matter how many times they say, ‘I’m sorry. It will never happen again,’ that is their way of saying it will be worse the next time around.”