Charges: Fentanyl dealer shot, killed man at St. Paul encampment over nonpayment

A man charged with murder in connection with a shooting at a St. Paul homeless encampment is believed to have killed the victim because he wasn’t paying him back for drugs, court records show.

Francisco Diaz-Xique, 21, faces one count of second-degree murder for his alleged role in the July 20 killing of 37-year-old Steffon T. Jennings.

RELATED: 1 person killed in shooting Sunday afternoon at St. Paul encampment

According to a criminal complaint, police found Jennings shot several times inside a tent at an encampment near the intersection of Maryland Avenue and Jackson Street. An autopsy revealed he had been shot seven times. Inside his jacket was a handwritten note with a phone number on it.

A criminal complaint alleges Diaz-Xique and two others, a man and a woman, had started coming around the encampment to sell fentanyl.

A witness who was in the tent at the time of the shooting told police he was worried the encampment “was getting ‘hot” because of the new people frequenting the area. Another witness who was in the tent said she had overheard a man asking Jennings if he “got his message” right before the shooting.

A third witness reported seeing a man leaving the encampment after the shooting while trying to conceal a handgun in his pants, the complaint states. This witness also explained that Diaz-Xique had fronted Jennings 3.5 grams of fentanyl worth about $350-400, and Jennings was not going to pay him back.

Police reviewed surveillance footage from a business near the encampment, which showed a group of two men and a woman getting out of a white Lexus and heading toward the encampment around 1 p.m. on July 20 and returning about 15 minutes later.

The Lexus was recovered not far from the shooting, and after obtaining a warrant, investigators searched the vehicle and found a box of 9 mm bullets, a wallet containing Diaz-Xique’s ID, a prescription with his name on it and what appeared to be a portion of a drug ledger.

Further investigation revealed that the Lexus had been at a body shop in June with a callback number that matched the note found inside Jennings’ jacket.

The afternoon of the shooting, a man had also handed a note to an officer at a convenience store near the encampment with the same phone number written on it, according to the complaint. “He and his girl did it,” the man said, explaining it was the phone number for the person who shot Jennings.

A check of the phone number found it belonged to Diaz-Xique.

Diaz-Xique was booked into the Ramsey County Jail on Tuesday, and he is set to make his first court appearance on Wednesday.

Court records indicate Diaz-Xique has two prior felony drug convictions.
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