A 17-year-old from Inver Grove Heights will stand trial as an adult on murder charges in the July shooting death of a 16-year-old boy at a Brooklyn Park park, according to a criminal complaint.
Nyzeir A’Shoun Reay, 17, faces two counts of second-degree murder: one alleging he killed the boy intentionally, the other that the boy died while he was committing a second-degree assault with a firearm. The complaint was filed Oct. 20 in Hennepin County District Court, a day after Reay waived certification proceedings before Judge Rachel Hughey and was ordered to stand trial as an adult. Bail was set at $1 million.
According to the complaint, officers from several agencies responded at about 10:48 p.m. on July 5 to a shooting at Hartkopf Park on Florida Avenue North, where about 50 people had gathered. Most of them ran when the shots were fired. Officers found the 16-year-old, who had been shot in the head, and he died at the scene despite efforts to save him. Five shell casings were found near a jungle gym.
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Witnesses at first named another person as the shooter, the complaint says. Officers stopped a van carrying that person the next day and found a handgun with an extended magazine and a drum magazine in a backpack near his seat, and forensic testing matched the casings from the park to that gun.
A witness later told investigators that the person he saw fire the gun was not the one others had blamed, though that person had been at the park with three or four associates. Investigators used social media to identify the shooter the witness described as Reay. A second witness said the other person pointed toward the victim and said something, and that Reay immediately pulled out a handgun and began firing; that witness positively identified Reay, according to the complaint.
Reay and the other person left the park together, the complaint says. Reay was later arrested in Illinois and brought back to Minnesota.
Each murder count carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, according to the complaint.
