Star Tribune
Teen admits role in St. Paul murder that spawned Amir Locke’s killing in police raid
A teenager has admitted to being an accomplice in a shooting death in St. Paul that put in motion a predawn raid in a downtown Minneapolis apartment that ended with Amir Locke’s killing by police.
Feysal J. Ali, 18, of Minneapolis pleaded guilty Monday in Ramsey County District Court to being an accomplice after the fact to second-degree murder in connection with the death of Otis R. Elder, 38, on Jan. 10, 2022, as Elder sat in his vehicle.
Sentencing for Ali is scheduled for March 27. IHe remains jailed in lieu of $1 million bail.
Elder was shot in the back during a suspected drug transaction outside a music recording studio in the 500 block of N. Prior Avenue. He died about 30 minutes later at Regions Hospital.
The shooter, Mekhi C. Speed, now 19, was sentenced in July 2022 to a term of more than 16 years after pleading guilty to second-degree murder. Speed is expected to serve roughly 10½ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
Speed was 17 when Elder was killed, and Ali was 16. Both were prosecuted in adult court.
At the time of the shooting, Speed was living in a unit of the Bolero Flats Apartment Homes at 1117 S. Marquette Av. and also had access to a different unit where police barged in on Feb. 2, 2022, and shot the 22-year-old Locke, who was sleeping on the couch and emerged from under a blanket with a gun in his hand. Speed and Locke are cousins.
Investigators alleged that Ali’s cellphone was at the scene of Elder’s shooting and near the apartment building where Locke was shot, according to the charges. The charges also said police found Ali’s fingerprints on a stolen vehicle that he and Speed used to flee to downtown Minneapolis after the shooting.
Also, his DNA was recovered from a jacket that investigators say was being worn by someone sitting next to Elder when he was shot, the charges added. The DNA matched a sample on file in a convicted offender database, the charges continued.
According to Ramsey County prosecutors:
On the night of Jan. 10, officers answered a 911 call and found Elder in the street wounded in the back. A person speaking with Elder on the phone just before he was shot told police that “it sounded like Elder was conducting a drug transaction [and] the phone call then abruptly ended,” according to the charges.
As their investigation progressed, St. Paul police filed applications for search warrant affidavits for three Bolero Flats apartments.
Locke, who was not a target of the investigation, was sleeping in the apartment of relatives when a Minneapolis police SWAT team burst in shortly before 7 a.m. on Feb. 2.
Video from an officer’s body camera showed police rushing inside and yelling “Search warrant!” as Locke lay under a blanket on the couch. An officer kicked the couch, Locke stirred, holding a firearm in his right hand. He was shot by officer Mark Hanneman, within seconds of police entering.
The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension investigated Locke’s death. The county attorney at the time, Mike Freeman, and Attorney General Keith Ellison concluded there was not enough evidence to charge Hanneman or the officers involved with a crime stemming from Locke’s death.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
