At the corner of 16th Street and Shotwell, you won’t find Lindsay McCollum and Eddie “Tennessee” Tate’s tent anymore. Instead, you’ll see a grim poster.
The two were killed in a homeless encampment near the intersection on December 2016. And now, via a large banner this week affixed to the fence of the adjacent Honda dealership, McCollum’s mother is offering a $5,000 reward to whomever can crack this case.
Carrie McCollum moved from California to Knoxville, Tennessee, following the death of her daughter, but had a friend create and hang the banner. McCollum will additionally publish an article in next month’s Street Sheet, hoping to reach people who know anything the police haven’t been able to learn. The investigation, she told Mission Local over the phone, just “isn’t moving forward.”
Lindsay McCollum was 27 and had no fixed address when she was shot the night of December 18, 2016. Her boyfriend, 51-year-old Tate, was also killed in the incident, in which two males with handguns were described as the assailants. Like many of those interviewed in the wake of the killing, McCollum’s mother admitted Lindsay had been on drugs for a few years, but was adamant that “she didn’t belong there.”
Not quite two years on, Carrie McCollum is frustrated that “no one is in jail,” but hopeful that offering a reward will move someone to do “the right thing.”
“This person is going to the beach, which my daughter can’t; maybe driving a car, which my daughter can’t,” she said. “I don’t want them to die. Just to go to jail for the rest of their lives.”