Austin man dies in police shooting

Published 9:21 pm Thursday, October 24, 2013

MINNETONKA, Minn. — Family and friends of a southern Minnesota man shot and killed by Minnetonka police are looking for answers.

Twenty-seven-year-old Michael Regner Tray of Austin was shot by police Wednesday night in the underground garage of a suburban apartment complex. The Hennepin County medical examiner’s office said Tray died at the scene of multiple gunshot wounds.

“This is a kid who had a lot to live for,” Tray’s stepfather, Jim Greer of Austin, Minn., told the Star Tribune by phone Thursday night, his voice breaking up. “He wasn’t a troublemaker. I just don’t understand it, and I probably never will.”

Email newsletter signup

Police were called to the apartments after a resident said a man who didn’t live there had been spotted with a cocked revolver. Police confronted Tray in the underground garage, where he was shot and killed.

Greer said his stepson had recently graduated from St. Cloud State University and had been fixing up his late father’s house in Ottumwa, Iowa, where he found an antique .44 Magnum revolver. Greer said he suspects Tray brought the gun with him when he visited his girlfriend at her Minnetonka apartment so it wouldn’t be stolen.

“I just wish he had left it in the car,” Greer said.

Greer said Tray’s girlfriend told him that she was on the phone with him when she heard screaming and the line went dead.

Tray’s college roommate and friend Kyle Hansen agreed that Tray was not a troublemaker.

“There’s no way he’d pull a gun out if he saw police. It’s not like the kid,” Hansen told the Star Tribune. “I’m in shock. I lost a good friend, and I want answers because something doesn’t add up.”

Names of the Minnetonka police officers who were involved in the shooting will be released early next week.