The San Francisco Police Department said Wednesday that the reward to find the suspected killers of two people shot to death in the Mission in 2016 has doubled to $200,000.
Lindsay Elaine McCollum, 27, and Eddie “Tennessee” Tate, 51, were killed on Dec. 16, 2016, at 16th Street and South Van Ness Avenue by two unknown assailants. Witnesses described the suspects as men armed with handguns.
McCollum and Tate were homeless at the time, living inside a wooden box on 16th Street, where they were shot and killed. McCollum’s mother initially offered a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of their murderers; SFPD offered a $25,000 reward in 2019, and increased that to $100,000 later on.
McCollum’s mother wrote a Street Sheet article in 2018 titled “Do You Remember Me?” about her daughter, saying McCollum was an animal lover and had a pit bull named Lily at the time of her killing. She played the piano, her mother wrote, favoring Johann Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” and Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the “Titanic” soundtrack. She enjoyed Janet Evanovich romance novels, and her favorite childhood movie was “The Little Mermaid.”
“Lindsay was a pain in the butt,” her mother wrote. “She had a strong personality, and at times could be fierce. Oh, what I would give for another hug from her and, yes, even another argument.”
In a 2016 Mission Local obituary, Tate was remembered as “like the Duke, like John Wayne,” and a perennial help for other homeless residents living nearby. “[He was a] knight in shining armor who rode around on a little bike,” another resident told a Mission Local reporter. “It is scary to think that there is someone out there who is so heartless they could kill someone with such a big heart.”
Tate was one of hundreds of homeless people displaced by the Super Bowl in 2016, when several homeless residents told Mission Local that San Francisco city officials had pushed them away from downtown and onto Division Street.
At the time, Tate was living inside a plywood box on wheels with a generator tacked on. He had been told to relocate six times in four days, he said, and was worried he would be forced to give up his home.
“I don’t want to replace this,” he told this reporter then, pointing to the wooden box behind him. It was the same box where he and McCollum were killed months later.
Anyone who recognizes the person of interest, or anyone having information regarding this homicide, is asked to contact the police department at 415-553-1145 or after hours at 415-553-1071. You may also call the SFPD Tip Line at 1-415-575-4444 or Text a Tip to TIP411 and begin the text message with SFPD. You may remain anonymous.
There’s a big hitch here,
I’m starting to attend and testify and Police Commission meetings and there’s a lady there who has been trying to get the cops to find her son’s killer/s for a decade or more and she is always there to cajole them with her pictures of him.
She brought up an interesting point these last few meetings.
Seems the department has not given out any of these rewards for info for years.
Turns out they have rules that prevent reward money going to anyone who is a gangster in their records and they are the only ones who know the culprits.
She’s been pushing for a reform on those rules and are the same rules tied to the reward in this case ?
Go Niners !!
h.