The man who shot and killed a 16-year-old boy who tried to rob him at gunpoint in St. Paul will not be charged, prosecutors said.

The Ramsey County attorney’s office said Wednesday that it was declining to charge the man, whose name has not been made public.

Lavauntai Broadbent of West St. Paul was fatally shot July 31, ending an apparent robbery spree for the teen and several friends.

In declining to charge the man for fatally shooting Broadbent, the county attorney’s office said it “has concluded that no criminal charges are appropriate regarding Broadbent’s death as the use of deadly force was legally justified.”

According to police reports and charges against four teens who had been with Broadbent the day he was killed, police were called at 10:26 p.m. to the area of the World War I monument at Summit Avenue and Mississippi River Boulevard.

A man identified as K.L. said he had gone to the river bluffs to watch the blue moon that night. A woman had been sitting nearby and they struck up a conversation. A boy approached K.L. and asked to use his cellphone to call his mom. K.L. gave him his phone, and another boy walked up. He was wearing a mask, stood three feet from K.L. and pointed a handgun. “Empty your pockets, (racial epithet),” the male said, according to K.L.

“K.L. stated he thought he or the woman were going to be killed so he grabbed his holstered gun and fired several shots at the suspect with the gun,” the charging petitions said.

The wounded teen fell face-down. The boy who had asked for K.L.’s phone ran off.

K.L., who had a permit to carry the pistol, told the teen not to move and said Broadbent responded, “I dropped the gun,” according to the petitions. K.L. told the woman to call an ambulance and police.

K.L. tried to talk to the wounded boy, Broadbent, who stopped responding. K.L. asked the woman to get a first-aid kit he had in his car.

K.L. told police he had feared that Broadbent would kill him and the woman, and said he had obtained his permit to carry a gun for his protection after he had recently been assaulted while walking home from a grocery store.

Before he was shot, Broadbent had spent the day engaging in criminal activity with friends, according to the charging petitions.

The spree began around 4:40 a.m. July 31, when a man reported his car had been stolen and contained two loaded guns.

Ten minutes after the car was reported stolen, two miles away, police were called to an armed robbery of a man at a bus stop, where a matching vehicle was spotted.

Later Friday night, the teens had gone to the cliffs and took turns shooting a gun into the air, one of the teens told police. Broadbent wanted to rob someone and they could see two people below them. Broadbent reportedly said, “Let’s stain them,” apparently slang for robbing people, according to the petitions.

The four teens with Broadbent that day were Donte Edward Foster, 16, of Woodbury; Kendell Anthony Lewis, 16, of St. Paul; Malcolm James Devion Golden, 17, of St. Paul; and Nautica Delshaun Cox, 16, of St. Paul.

The county attorney’s office charged Foster, Golden and Lewis with two counts of aiding and abetting first-degree aggravated robbery (one for the bus stop case and the other for the river-bluff case), and aiding and abetting vehicle theft. Cox is charged with aiding and abetting first-degree aggravated robbery in the bus stop case and aiding and abetting vehicle theft. Foster and Lewis are also charged with reckless discharge of a firearm.

Prosecutors are seeking to have the four teens, who are being held in the Ramsey County Juvenile Detention Center, charged and tried as adults.

Minnesota law says people can use deadly force for self-defense under four conditions, according to Andrew Rothman, president of the Minnesota-based Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance: to prevent great bodily harm or death to himself or another person; when he or she is the non-aggressor; if no lesser force would end the threat; and, in public settings, if it’s not possible to retreat safely.