Devontre Vann told a court Wednesday that every day he thinks about the pain he caused two young women when he and three acquaintances under the influence of tequila and Xanax took turns raping them on Harriet Island last summer.

“I want to apologize to the victims and their families,” Vann said to Ramsey County District Judge Mark Ireland when it was his turn to speak at his sentencing hearing. “I regret what happened. That’s something I think about every night.”

Vann, 20, was the second of the four defendants charged in the case to be sentenced.

He entered an Alford plea in late January, which his attorney, Patricia Hughes, said was because Vann doesn’t remember his actions that evening because he was so high and drunk at the time.

He was sentenced Wednesday to about 23 years in prison on two counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and two counts of aiding and abetting aggravated robbery.

He and the other defendants — Vershone Jaquay Hodges, 20, Deandray Artez Easley, 19, and Choncey Milan Stewart, 17 — are accused of holding up the 18-year-old girls and their two male friends around 11 p.m. last June 5, eventually forcing the two males to strip and lie face-down as three of the four took turns raping the young women.

When they were finished, the defendants took off with the victims’ cellphones and other belongings, according to court documents.

While the two women were present during Vann’s sentencing Wednesday, neither spoke.

When it was her turn to address the court, Ramsey County Assistant Attorney Kelly Olmstead said what they and their two male friends endured that night is “what nightmares are made of.”

“We need the defendant to understand how extraordinarily traumatic … this was,” Olmstead said. “It was horrific. It was life-shattering. I can’t put to words how horrible it was and continues to be … And that pain doesn’t go away with this sentencing.”

Still, she said the state appreciated the remorse Vann showed.

Hughes said the young man grew up in a good home with both his parents, his grandmother and siblings present in his life. Shortly before the sexual assault took place, he signed up to join the U.S. Navy.

Unlike the other three defendants charged alongside him, Hughes said Vann was not a gang member. He only really knew one of the other young men who went to Harriet Island that night to make a music video.

Deciding to go was his first mistake, Hughes said, adding that his second was drinking tequila and popping two Xanax pills.

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Scammer returned to take money by force, Bloomington police say “But that is no excuse. He is not making excuses,” Hughes told the court. “I am just saying this is a good person who did a really bad thing and he’ll be spending many years in prison thinking about that.”

One of Vann’s family members left the courtroom shaking and crying when his sentence was handed down.

Hodges was sentenced in January to 25 years in prison. Easley is scheduled to be sentenced in May after a jury convicted him of the charges filed against him last year. Stewart’s case is pending.