A man has been sentenced to a seven-year term for stabbing a teenager working at a Twin Cities Fleet Farm and leaving her with severe neck wounds.

Gerald Dwayne Hudson, 31, of Kansas City, Kan., pleaded guilty Tuesday in Carver County District Court to first-degree assault in connection with stabbing 17-year-old Ava Larson on Nov. 24 at the store just off Hwy. 212 near the Jonathan Parkway exit in Carver.

The stabbing left Larson, who lives just outside Jordan, with an entry wound on one side of the back of her neck and an exit wound on the other side.

With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Hudson is expected to serve the first 4½ years of his seven-year term in prison and the balance on supervised release.

At the time of his arrest, roughly an hour after the assault, Hudson was wanted by federal law enforcement in connection with absconding from a residential re-entry center in July 2020 while on supervised release stemming from his sentence in Las Vegas for being a felon in possession of a gun on a college campus.

The felony conviction, in 2014 in Clark County, Nev., was for carrying a concealed weapon.

According to the criminal complaint and the Carver County Sheriff's Office:

Sheriff's deputies arrived at the store to find Larson receiving emergency aid at the customer service desk.

In-store surveillance video captured Hudson walking toward Larson and "making a striking movement" toward her while her back was to him. Hudson fled to the parking lot and drove off in an SUV.

Deputies spotted the SUV in Chanhassen and "conducted a high-risk traffic stop" in the Jersey Mike's parking lot near 78th Street and Powers Boulevard. He was arrested there without incident.

While in jail, Hudson explained that while in the store, he asked Larson where to find a particular item, and "maybe she said something that didn't sound right to me," the complaint quoted him as saying. That's when he picked up a "thing," as he called it, and hit Larson with it.

Neither the charges nor the Sheriff's Office disclosed what was used to stab the employee or whether that item was found.