Relatives identify young man killed in overnight shooting in St. Paul's Battle Creek neighborhood

St. Paul police appealed for the public's help Saturday in finding whoever fatally shot a 22-year-old man in St. Paul's Battle Creek neighborhood the night before.

His death was the city's 16th homicide of the year, continuing a violent few weeks in the city.

Authorities have yet to name the slain man, but relatives identified him as Kacey Feiner. He was shot during a confrontation in the 2100 block of Glenridge Avenue, a short residential street that runs into Battle Creek Regional Park. By the time officers arrived on the scene about 1:15 a.m. Saturday, Feiner had already been whisked away by car.

He was dropped off at Regions Hospital in St. Paul a short time later, where doctors sought unsuccessfully to revive him.

Police asked anyone with information about the killing to call 651-366-5650.

According to police spokesman Sgt. Mike Ernster, homicide detectives and crime scene technicians spent hours collecting evidence and canvassing the neighborhood, looking for potential witnesses.

As of Saturday afternoon, no one had been arrested.

While the cause of the shooting remains unknown, Feiner had come to the attention of authorities before for suspected gang affiliations.

In 2015, he and another man were charged in connection with a drive-by shooting that left a 17-year-old boy injured, an attack that authorities suspected was gang-motivated. Feiner had been riding in the front passenger seat of a car from which the shots were fired, and a Glock 9-millimeter handgun was reportedly recovered from under a rear seat cushion. Feiner and his co-defendant were both members of the HAM Crazy gang.

He accepted a plea deal that required him to plead guilty to committing a crime for benefit of a gang and illegal gun possession, with charges dropped, and was sentenced to five years in prison. A search of Feiner's criminal history shows that he was convicted of fleeing police, a misdemeanor, later that year, but hadn't had any other serious convictions since then.

Family and friends remembered him differently, airing their grief on social media. Commenting on the St. Paul Police Department's Facebook page, his grandmother wrote: "They … killed him," using an expletive.

When another commenter asked whether she knew who "they" were, she responded that she didn't.

Later, she wrote on her page that she couldn't fathom the hurt that Feiner's death has caused his mother.

"I'm soo sick of this violence! Taking the lives of our babies! When will it stop?? My young, talented beautiful grandson gone. I'm devastated as are soo many," she wrote.

Before that post, she had changed her profile picture to a cartoon image of a pistol, its barrel tied into a knot, with a pleading message: "STOP THE VIOLENCE."

Libor Jany • 612-673-4064