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A second teen was charged Tuesday in connection to the murder of a suspected Minneapolis-area drug dealer which prompted the police raid that resulted in an officer shooting and killing Amir Locke.
The 16-year-old suspect is charged out of Ramsey County with aiding and abetting second-degree murder. Fox News Digital is not naming the suspect because he is being charged as a juvenile.
He was not in custody as of midday Wednesday, a St. Paul Police spokesman told Fox News Digital.
AMIR LOCKE SHOOTING WARRANTS UNSEALED, DEREK CHAUVIN TRIAL JUDGE SIGNED OFF ON NO-KNOCK RAID
The charges come about two weeks after a 17-year-old suspect was arrested in Winona, Minnesota, and charged with second-degree murder in the Jan. 10 shooting of 38-year-old Otis Elder in St. Paul.
Locke was the 17-year-old’s cousin. Ramsey County court documents indicate the 16-year-old accomplice was in the front passenger seat of Elder’s vehicle when the 17-year-old allegedly shot and killed him.
Tuesday’s petition alleges the younger teen caused Elder’s death while committing or attempting to commit a felony aggravated robbery. Investigators used fingerprints, cellphone data and DNA from a jacket recovered during a search to pin the 16-year-old to the crime.
Unsealed warrants say two witnesses dialed 911 after hearing gunshots and running out of a recording studio to find Elder lying in the street next to his vehicle. A third witness was on the phone with Elder at the time of the shooting and told police he believed Elder “had been selling drugs to someone in the car when another person tried to get in the backseat.” A struggle could be heard, and the line went dead.
Surveillance footage showed two individuals by Elder’s vehicle when gunshots are heard. The two rifled through Elder’s vehicle and then ran back to a light-colored Mercedes and fled the scene.
Minneapolis police had obtained a no-knock warrant to search a seventh-floor unit in the Bolero Flats Apartments on Feb. 2. The unit was rented by a woman with a live-in boyfriend, who is the 17-year-old suspect’s older brother. Locke was their cousin, and body camera footage showed he was lying on a couch wrapped in a blanket when uniformed officers entered the apartment before 7 a.m. He appeared to move away from the couch with a gun in his hand moments before Officer Mark Hanneman shot him.
Locke was not the subject of the warrant. In requesting the warrant, investigators had noted that the suspects in Elder’s killing had been “posting videos and photos on Instagram holding several different firearms to include a rifle, possibly the murder weapon.”
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey ordered a temporary moratorium on no-knock warrants.
Minneapolis has seen renewed protests since Locke’s shooting, which happened during the federal trial for the three other officers at the scene where George Floyd was killed on Memorial Day 2020. Former officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder in Floyd’s death and sentenced to 22.5 years in prison.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
