A former Burger King employee with an extensive rap sheet has been sentenced to nearly 11 years in prison for helping rob a McDonald's in southeastern Minnesota, herding employees into a walk-in cooler during the early-morning ambush.

Quiana S. Evans, 30, of Rochester, was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in St. Paul to 10 years and 10 months in prison after pleading guilty to joining accomplice Christian Alexander, 25, also of Rochester, in the robbery of the McDonald's in Byron, Minn., before dawn on June 15, 2011.

Alexander's pistol went off during the holdup, but no one was wounded. He is serving a 14-year prison term for the Byron robbery as well as carrying out other McDonald's holdups in Rochester and Winona.

Forced workers into cooler

Evans and Alexander stole about $1,850 from the Byron restaurant in addition to taking possessions from the employees before forcing them into the cooler.

In arguing for a prison term of 10 years, defense attorney Peter Wold noted in a court filing that a "desperate" Evans had just lost her job at Burger King and was newly evicted from her home when Alexander "flashed her a wad of money" and told of the crimes he was committing.

While acknowledging Evans' history of drug dealing and other misdeeds that make her "not innocent as a lamb," Wold also characterized her as "small time" when it came to her criminal past.

The government countered that Evans deserved a term of more than 16 years, noting her two aggravated-battery convictions as a 16-year-old, six felony convictions while a young adult and "myriad ... prison violations" while incarcerated that range from sexual misbehavior to smuggling to assaulting a fellow inmate.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482