Fridley teen charged with murder in ex-girlfriend’s shooting

Alex Derosier, Pioneer Press
Updated ·3 min read

A 17-year-old who police say admitted to fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend in Fridley last week was charged Tuesday with second-degree murder.

Fridley teen Fenan Abdurezak Uso is accused of shooting an 18-year-old woman he had broken up with two weeks before, according to a charging document filed by the Anoka County Attorney’s Office.

Police arrested Uso last Thursday after emergency workers responded to a report of a hit-and-run crash that injured a pedestrian in the 4500 block of Third Street Northeast in Fridley shortly before 4 p.m.

But when emergency responders arrived at the scene they found 18-year-old Jayden Lee Kline of Fridley lying unresponsive in the street near her home’s driveway with a gunshot wound, according to court documents.

Life-saving measures were performed on Kline, who was brought to North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale where she was pronounced dead less than an hour later.

The Anoka County Sheriff’s Office had initially reported she had been shot, but did not immediately confirm the cause of her death.

Prosecutors are seeking to charge the 17-year-old Uso as an adult, said Keith Ternes, a spokesman with the Anoka County Attorney’s Office.

Charges

According to charging documents:

Kline’s mother said her daughter and ex-boyfriend Uso had been at the Rosedale mall earlier on Thursday afternoon. The two had been dating off and on for about a year, her brother told police.

At around 4 p.m., Kline’s neighbors said they heard a loud noise outside and saw a gold van speeding away from the scene. Kline’s brother saw his sister lying in the road near their driveway and had initially assumed she was hit by a car.

Doorbell camera footage from a neighbor showed a gold minivan slowly approach Kline’s residence, and stop. A gunshot was heard, the front passenger door opened and a woman fell out and was not moving. The van, which police learned from Kline’s brother belonged to Uso, then sped away.

Anoka County authorities tracked the location of Uso’s phone and learned he was in the Burnsville area, and notified city police, who located the van he was driving shortly before 6:30 p.m.

Police detain suspect

Police pulled Uso over, and saw a pistol in the van’s center console. Police detained Uso, who told them he and his ex-girlfriend Kline had gotten into an argument after leaving the mall that afternoon.

When he was dropping Kline off at her house, Uso said “he thought he pulled out the gun when dropping off (Kline), pointed it at her, pulled the trigger once and drove off fast.”

Uso added he drove away quickly because “he realized he did something dumb” and “was shaking as he drove away and dropped the gun in the van.”

He told police he had obtained the .40 caliber Smith & Wesson handgun from “unknown persons” the day before. Police said the serial number matched a gun stolen in Marshalltown, Iowa.

Information on Uso’s attorney was not immediately available Tuesday.

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