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Amir Locke’s room in Dallas was full of things that felt out of place in a young man’s space, his aunt Linda Tyler thought as she helped Amir’s mother pack the remnants of his life.
It had been full of mementos — family photos from the mall, elephant figures that a beloved grandmother collected before she died, a miniature basketball set from his godfather, an L-shaped desk Tyler had given Amir at least a decade prior. All this was proof to her of Amir’s “old soul.”
“To help my sister put away her child’s things for the final time … to go with her right before the week of the funeral to get his suit and she said to me, ‘Is this the last time I’m going to shop for my son?’ Overwhelming,” Tyler recalled.
Locke lived in Texas with family but grew up in the Twin Cities and visited often. He was 22 and transient, a high school grad who shrugged off college to chase a career in music, a food delivery driver suspended between cities, searching for purpose.
The morning of Feb. 2, a police SWAT officer quietly turned a key to the downtown Minneapolis apartment where Locke lay beneath a blanket on the couch. He had been sleeping over with his cousin, 23-year-old Marlon Speed.
There was no knock at the door and no wait for a response. Nine seconds flash between the moment police burst in and when they shoot Locke. They note he had a pistol in his hand.
Two months later, prosecutors said they declined to charge Mark Hanneman, the officer who pulled the trigger, because they didn’t feel they could get a conviction under state law.
Amir Locke’s death rekindled years of tension in a city where rioters once torched a police station and caused an estimated $500 million in damage after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd.
Family members fear he will be defined by his death. There was so much more to him, they say, and so much left to be done.
“No parent would ever imagine that their kid would die such a horrific death. You really didn’t think he would be gunned down like this because you live life in such a way that you would avoid these things,” Tyler said.
Locke was not the subject of the warrant that sent police to the apartment in the Bolero Flats building. Those investigating the death of a St. Paul man a month earlier eventually arrested Locke’s 17-year-old cousin Mekhi Speed,Marlon’s brother. Mekhi lived with his mother in a different apartment in the building. Police have not offered evidence that Locke was involved with the St. Paul homicide or that he was close with Mekhi.
As a musician Locke experimented with trap music, an unflinching brand of hip-hop typified by graphic allusions to drugs and gangs, but he had no criminal record to suggest his artistic aesthetic bled into real life. Family members say he had a permit for his gun and carried it for protection while delivering for DoorDash.
Locke’s father, Andre Locke Sr., learned of his son’s death when authorities arrived at his house later that morning. He called Locke’s mother, Karen Wells, who flew from Dallas. Amir’s brother, 24-year-old Andre Locke Jr., ran his hands over his brother’s five bullet wounds as his body lay in the medical examiner’s office; the wounds felt as big as bottle caps.
