MINNEAPOLIS – For days police picked up surveillance images around the Twin Cities of a silver Mercedes that a witness linked to the street slaying of a man on January 10. The witness said he saw the car flee. Indeed, surveillance video showed the Mercedes parked near the victim’s vehicle. A man got out and entered the victim’s vehicle on the passenger side. Another man stood outside the driver’s door. There was a loud gunshot. Police recognized the Mercedes, which had been taken on a test drive from a dealership and never returned. The car was then used in an armed robbery and banged and dented, apparently by an amateur driver, maybe more.
> But who was the driver? Who was the second man? Was it one pf tbem or both who shot Otis Elder, the 43-year-old man who was killed?
> Police used surveillance videos to make connections. A video vehicle showed the Mercedes off and on at the fashionable downtown Bolero Flats apartments. One video after the Otis Elder killing showed three men got out of the car, two of whom had been at the murder scene. One clearly was Mekhi Camden Speed, 17, police said.
> Who was this Speed teen-ager? He was on supervised probаtion for a September 2020 shooting outside а suburban Brooklyn Pаrk gаs stаtion. In that case, Judge Shereen Askаlаni ordered trаumа therаpy аnd а psychologicаl аssessment. Speed wаs releаsed to his mother on electronic home monitoring. Last October he was furloughed for school.
> Speed’s mother lived in Apartment 402 at Bolero Flats and he lived with her. He also had a key to Apartment 1402, where his brother lived, and 1403 across the hall. Police saw all this but only after the fact. The videos were not live. The car was moving around a lot.
> Additional surveillance video showed four men, including Speed, leaving the Mercedes at a nearby downtown parking ramp near Bolero Falts early on January 11 — just hours after Elder was killed.
> Many days later police obtained search warrants for apartments 701, 1402 and 1403 at Bolero Flats. The judge who issued the no-knock warrant was told there was probable cause to pick up and hold Speed and two others for murder and aiding an offender afterward.
> SWAT officers raided a Bolero Fiats apartment at 6:48 a.m., on February 2. Body cams show the officers used a key to unlock the door and enter. At least four officers in uniform and protective vests rushed in. “Police, search warrant!” they shouted. And “Hands!” And “Get on the ground!” One officer kicked a sectional sofa, where a Speed cousin, Amir Locke, apparently was asleep. Next the body cams show Locke was holding a pistol. The cam recorded three shots, then ends.
> Locke was dead. Speed, the object of the warrant, was not at the apartment.
> Six days later another SWAT team captured Speed in Winona, He was in the backseat of a car that the driver was refueling. He tried to run off but almost mediately was collared. Police said he was carrying a loaded semiautomatic handgun.
Earlier: After Winona arrest, teen charged with murder
PORTAITS OF IDENTITY ISSUES
The faces of Mekhi Camden Speed
Scrawny kid. School composition book at his side.
Teen fashion statement. A mall shopper.
Linked in. His own cell phone.