Pain lingers for family of slain Mpls. man

Tremaine Finley's mother, Jackie, right, at a candlelight vigil for her son in 2004. (JEFF WHEELER)

The call came around this time two years ago as Willie Finley was heading to a meeting.

A police detective assigned to his brother's unsolved murder was on the other end of the line. Maybe he had cracked the case, Willie thought, but there was no optimism in the man's voice.

The detective started asking him about his mother's car.

Willie hadn't given much thought to the fate of the 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier, which had been sitting in a police impound lot since shortly after Tremaine Finley's life ended on Nov. 17, 2004.

The detective asked whether he wanted to come pick it up.

For a moment, Willie considered the man's offer, he recalled on a recent afternoon, "just so I can have a piece of that last moment."

Of course, he'd held onto other mementos from his brother's life. The withered flowers from the funeral. A set of football shoulder pads he had saved from a fire that nearly destroyed the family's south Minneapolis home several years ago. "It's something real and tangible that I held on to," he said.

Their mother, Jackie Finley, still has a lock of Tremaine's hair, which he usually kept braided.

Tremaine, all 5 feet 6 inches of him, was a popular student and star football player at Roosevelt High School – "the kind of kid that was just," Willie says, "selfless, a very caring heart." After graduation, he enrolled at the U to chase his dream of playing Division I ball, his older brother said. He dropped out after a year and a half and, at 20, got a job at the Ikea store out by the Mall of America, where, Willie says, his picture hung above his boss' desk for years after his death.

As Willie tells it, the worst day of his life began 10 years ago in a dank alley in the Longfellow neighborhood.

Earlier that day, Tremaine had asked to borrow his mother's car to go to Denny's.

The group refused, and the gunman started firing inside, hitting Tremaine, who was behind the wheel, in the chest and grazing another man's arm.

Despite being shot, Tremaine still managed to drive to the parking lot of the Cub Foods, nine blocks away at the corner of Minnehaha and 26th Avenues, Willie said. He got out there and collapsed to the ground. Shoppers scurried past as he lay dying.

Someone eventually called 911.

He died later that night at Hennepin County Medical Center.

Police at first deemed the shooting a drug deal gone bad, but later revised their account, saying the friends had been victims of a failed carjacking. None of those there that night got a good look at the gunman, and if they did then they're not talking, Willie said.

A decade later, the reward remains unclaimed.

On a recent afternoon, he recalled Tremaine's murder, while sitting in the living room of his town house in Crystal. The Finley family has for years demanded that police turn over evidence from the case so that they could hire a private investigator to look into the murder, Willie said, frustration creeping into his voice.

"People change and their jobs change and people advance in their careers," he said. "It's not a case for us. I get that it's somebody's job, but for us it's not a case, it's losing a family member."

Tremaine's death has been particularly hard on Willie, a high school teacher and football coach, who started a foundation in his younger brother's memory for at-risk youth. The two brothers had been very close; as children, Tremaine had looked up to Willie, who went on to a successful high school and college football playing career.

"It's walking around like I'm carrying him around on my back every day," Willie said. "And as it goes on, he's getting older and he's adding more weight."

"It's been a long time," Willie said, "but in my world he's been talked about a lot."