Suspect arrested in connection with brutal murder of grandmother by Minneapolis church

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) – According to court documents, police were able to use surveillance cameras to reconstruct the final hours of the grandmother who was found brutally beaten to death outside a north Minneapolis church in July and finally identify her killer.

According to court documents, 38-year-old Byron Bautista is charged with second-degree murder.

Bautista was spotted on surveillance video with Felisha Smith, 57, near Chicago Avenue and East Lake Street on July 13, police said. Surveillance cameras then captured the pair getting off a bus about five miles away in north Minneapolis, investigators said. Traffic cameras later recorded Bautista carrying Smith near Spirit of the Lord Church on Penn Avenue North, a block from the bus stop.

“This is traumatic,” said Bianca Harvey, Smith's daughter. “I really can't believe he would do this to my mother.”

Smith's daughters said they do not recognize Bautista and have no idea what connection their mother had to him.

Smith suffered a traumatic brain injury after a shooting in 2014, her daughters said. She disappeared after being discharged from The Estates at Chateau, a long-term care facility where she lived, they said.

Smith's daughters said the medical examiner told them their mother had also been sexually abused. Court documents make no mention of sexual abuse, but police found her body partially undressed.

It is unclear why Smith boarded a bus to north Minneapolis.

If convicted, Bautista faces a 40-year prison sentence. But for Smith's daughters, that's not enough.

“If Minnesota had the death penalty, I hope he gets it,” Harvey said.

Bautista will appear before a Hennepin County judge on Monday afternoon. Smith's children plan to attend.