Renaldo Terez McDaniel was looking under the hood of his car outside a St. Paul auto-parts store on a summer evening last June when three shots were fired.
One hit the 31-year-old McDaniel in the shoulder, another pierced his stomach. The third struck his head.
McDaniel, a father of seven, died shortly afterward in a pool of blood in the parking lot outside O’Reilly Auto Parts on Lexington Parkway.
Daryl Negel Curtis, the 35-year-old cousin of one of McDaniel’s foes, was the man who killed him, according to a Ramsey County District Court jury. After several hours of deliberation Thursday, the jury found Curtis guilty of premeditated first-degree murder and intentional second-degree murder in McDaniel’s death.
The verdict was reached just after 7 p.m.
The state built its case on witness descriptions of the shooter, video footage, text messages and testimony from Tameka Rae Smithson, Curtis’ former girlfriend. Smithson and another woman, Antionette Rie Johnson, were allegedly with Curtis on the day of the shooting.
Both Smithson and Johnson were charged with second-degree murder in the case, but the charge was amended to aiding and abetting for Smithson after she agreed to cooperate with police about what had happened.
Johnson’s murder trial is scheduled to start in February. Smithson will be sentenced next month for aiding and abetting an offender.
Curtis’ defense team tried to poke holes in Smithson’s testimony during the trial, arguing police badgered an “unstable” and “terrified” woman into giving them the sequence of events they wanted to hear about what happened on June 12.
Further, they said she was motivated to lie to police to ensure she wouldn’t be forced to serve a lengthy prison sentence if convicted of murder.
Defense attorneys Carole Finneran and Rebecca Ireland also argued that police had “tunnel vision” on Curtis almost immediately following the shooting, causing officers to inadequately pursue other suspects and process important evidence.
“They didn’t bother because they already had a black man and a red shirt,” Ireland said of Curtis during her closing arguments.
A black man with a red shirt was the description three key witnesses to the crime gave police after the shooting, prosecutors said during the proceedings.
The two employees working at O’Reilly’s that day as well as McDaniel’s cousin, who was standing beside him when he was shot as he worked to fix a broken brake light, all described the shooter that way, Assistant Ramsey County Attorney Tom Hatch said during his closing remarks.
He went on to walk jurors through the video footage presented during trial, first pointing out an image of Curtis, Smithson and Johnson captured at a nearby Walmart shortly before the shooting. Curtis is seen wearing a red T-shirt in the video.
He then jumped to footage taken from a day care center neighboring the auto-parts store. In that clip, taken just moments before the shooting, a man in a red shirt can be seen exiting a maroon SUV. It shows the man getting back into a maroon SUV shortly after McDaniel was gunned down. Curtis, Johnson and Smithson were seen driving a maroon SUV at Walmart.
Hatch also reminded jurors of the text messages and phone logs exchanged that day, including one between Curtis and Smithson that said nothing but the license plate number of McDaniel’s car. The other said “he’s looking under the hood.”
Last, he reiterated the power of Smithson’s testimony, which essentially fingered Curtis as the perpetrator. She said the two had been together that day when Johnson called and came and picked them up. The three had plans to go to a cookout later that night and made a stop at Walmart to get supplies.
Johnson is the girlfriend of Curtis’ cousin, the same cousin who was reportedly rivals with McDaniel.
Prosecutors said both Curtis and Johnson suspected that McDaniel was involved in an earlier nonfatal shooting of Curtis’ cousin. He was in prison at the time of McDaniel’s slaying.
After seeing McDaniel in the O’Reilly’s parking lot, Smithson said Johnson pulled over near the day care and Curtis exited the car, taking with him a gun from Johnson’s purse. They picked him up in the alley moments later. When he got in, Smithson testified that Curtis was sweating and that he told her he’d just shot McDaniel, Hatch said.
“With virtually everything that Tameka Smithson has testified being corroborated, there is just no room for reasonable doubt,” Hatch, the prosecutor, told the jurors shortly before they began deliberations. “She is a credible … courageous witness.”
“(Curtis) stood 10 feet from (McDaniel) and he put three bullets in him … that was deliberate, premeditated, cold-blooded murder,” Hatch said.
Neither the prosecution nor the defense could be immediately reached Thursday night for comment on the verdict.
Family and friends of both Curtis and McDaniel were present in the courtroom throughout the nearly weeklong trial.
Curtis was also convicted of homicide in 2000. He was released from prison in 2014.