At age 18 and six months removed from her high school graduation, Jayden Lee Kline was trying to figure out what she wanted to do next with her life. But she never got that chance, her mother said, because Fenan Abdurezak Uso “played out this act of murder as a result of what he could no longer get from Jayden.”
Uso, then 17, planned to kill Kline after she ended their relationship, prosecutors said last month during his jury trial in Anoka County District Court. He bought a stolen handgun the night before, told her he’d take her shopping, and then shot her in his car outside her Fridley home.
Jurors agreed and found the 19-year-old guilty of first-degree murder for shooting Kline the afternoon of Dec. 21, 2023, rejecting his claim that she was shot accidentally. On Wednesday, Judge Jenny Walker Jasper handed down Uso’s mandatory sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. He will be eligible for parole in 15 years, under a 2023 state law regarding juveniles certified as adults and serving a life sentence.
“As a judge, I always sit and think of something that I can say that will have an impact on this to lighten the load of grief for the family and the community and friends,” Walker Jasper said. “But this case is just so senseless and violent and tragic and sad. All I can say to you folks is, I am so sorry.”
Uso, of Fridley, was charged by juvenile petition with second-degree murder five days after the killing. A jury indicted him on a charge of first-degree murder in July 2024, four months after he turned 18.
‘I look for her every day’
Kline’s mother and her two older brothers told the court how the family struggles every day with the pain of her killing.
“My sister should have had the opportunity to leave her mark on the world,” her brother Tristan Kline said. “Because I know she would’ve helped change it.”
Brandon Kline said he always made sure that his sister was safe and taken care of ever since they lost their father, David, in 2014, when she was 8.
“I owed that to my dad, who couldn’t take care of her anymore,” he wrote in a statement, which was read by Assistant Anoka County Attorney Brenda Sund.
Uso is “an incredibly selfish and greedy human being,” Kline wrote, adding that Uso “always had a problem with Jayden’s attention being on anyone but himself.”
Jennifer Kline said her daughter “completed our family in many ways” and had an outgoing, friendly personality. She was a 2023 graduate of Columbia Heights High School, where she competed on the swim and synchronized swimming teams, and loved to spend time with her friends, playing games, watching movies, making videos and just hanging out.
“I look for her every day,” she said, “waiting for her to come bouncing down the hall from her bedroom, usually being followed by her dog and cat.”
A gunshot rang out
According to charging documents, police and emergency workers were sent to the 4500 block of Third Street Northeast just before 4 p.m. Dec. 21, 2023, on a report of a hit-and-run crash that injured a pedestrian.
Kline was found lying unresponsive in the street near her home’s driveway with a head wound. She was pronounced dead at North Memorial Hospital in Robbinsdale.
Kline’s mother told police her daughter had been at the Roseville mall that afternoon.
Brandon Kline told police he heard a loud noise, looked out a window, and saw his sister on the ground. He said he was told by a neighbor that a gold minivan sped away from the scene and that he assumed she had been struck.
He said his sister and Uso had dated on and off for about a year and that she had recently broken up with him because he lied to his family about the relationship.
A neighbor’s doorbell camera showed a gold minivan slowly approaching the home and stopping. A gunshot rang out, the front passenger door opened, and Kline fell out and was not moving. Her brother confirmed to police that it was Uso’s minivan.
Investigators later determined she had been shot in the back of the head at close range.
Police tracked the location of Uso’s phone, learned he was in the Burnsville area, and notified city police, who located the minivan at a gas station about 6:30 p.m. Officers saw a .40-caliber semi-automatic handgun in the minivan’s center console, and Uso was detained.
In an interview with investigators, Uso said he and Kline had broken up two weeks prior. He said they got into an argument at the mall. He said “he thought he pulled out the gun” when dropping her off at her house, “pointed it at her, pulled the trigger once and drove off fast,” the charges read.
Uso said he drove away quickly because “he realized he did something dumb” and “was shaking as he drove away and dropped the gun in the van.” Uso went on to say he had obtained the handgun from “unknown persons” the day before. Police said the serial number matched a gun stolen in Marshalltown, Iowa.
‘Great big, beautiful smile’
Uso testified at his trial that he had been distraught after their breakup. He said Kline was shot accidentally when she grabbed the gun to try to stop him from killing himself.
But Uso knew what he did, Kline’s brother Brandon said Wednesday in his victim impact statement, “and sat on the stand, lying and being a coward again, saying he wanted to kill himself.”
Uso, when given the opportunity to address the court, said: “I just want to say I’m extremely sorry from the bottom of my heart for Jayden’s family.”
Judge Walker Jasper, before imposing the sentence, recalled a photo of Kline that was introduced as an exhibit during the trial, showing her “great big, beautiful smile that she had.”
https://www.twincities.com/2025/11/12/fridley-teen-sentenced-jayden-kline-murder/