ST PAUL, Minn. — A man recently arrested in connection to the shooting death of 22-year-old Alex Becker is now charged with second-degree murder.
According to a criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County on Jan. 5, 20-year-old Arteze Kinerd, of Minneapolis, was charged with Becker's murder after surveillance video and clothing found in an apartment linked him to the scene.
The shooting happened on the 500 block of Lawson Avenue West just before midnight on Dec. 27, 2022. Becker was on his way home from work when he was shot and killed steps away from his home.
"Alex was a beautiful, gentle, smart, kind, hardworking, generous person. He loved Pokémon, D&D, Naruto, cartography, and Warcraft 3. He spent every day taking care of everyone and thinking of others. He was a hard worker and when he wasn’t working, he was spending time with his family," his mother, Tara Becker, told KARE 11 following his death.
A GoFundMe has been set up to help the Becker family with funeral expenses.
According to court documents, surveillance video showed three men run into an alley behind Becker the night he was killed. Seconds later, a different video recorded multiple gunshots, after which point two of the three men were seen walking away from the scene and getting into a black Toyota sedan, prosecutors allege.
Police tracked the sedan to Minneapolis in the following days. On Jan. 2, investigators said a cellphone taken from a home invasion robbery in St. Paul pinged in an apartment on the 2500 block of Penn Avenue, court documents said. Police identified Arteze Kinerd as being in the apartment through surveillance video and determined that's where he lived with his girlfriend.
Video from the night of Becker's murder showed the three men seen in the alley in St. Paul return to the Minneapolis apartment around 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 28.
Kinerd was arrested inside a gas station on Jan. 3, 2023, and after executing a search warrant in the Penn Avenue apartment, police recovered items of clothing that matched what the three men wore the night of Becker's death, a gun and multiple rounds of ammunition, the complaint said.
During interviews with investigators, Kinerd refused to answer where he was the night of the murder but was shown photos of the three men leaving his apartment wearing the same clothes as the men who shot Becker.
The Ramsey County Attorney's Office said Kinerd will make his first court appearance Thursday morning.