Truck Park shooting victim's family launches youth sports scholarship in her honor

Family honors victim of Truck Park shooting

Following a shooting at the Seventh Street Truck Park bar in St. Paul, a family of one victim is honoring her legacy with a new scholarship.

ST. PAUL, Minn. (FOX 9) - A St. Paul family is looking to do something special to honor a precious loved one killed in a mass shooting.

Marquisha "Kiki" Wiley had her life stolen at the age of 27 when she was caught in the middle of a gunfight inside the Seventh Street Truck Park bar on October 10, 2021.

The Wileys are now launching a scholarship to help a young athlete in the St. Paul neighborhood on the city’s westside where she grew up.

"It is hard, but doing things like this helps us kind of keep going in a positive way," explained Beth Wiley, Kiki’s mother.

One of the shooters, Devondre Phillips was sentenced to nearly 30 years in prison, last month. The other gunman, Terry Brown was convicted on murder charges at trial. Brown is scheduled to be sentenced in August.

With the family’s journey through the criminal justice system coming to a close, the Wileys and their supporters are turning their attention, to making sure Kiki’s legacy shines bright.

"She was a sweetheart," her mom told FOX 9’s Paul Blume in a Friday interview.

The Wileys have launched the Marquisha Doris Wiley Scholarship within the neighborhood youth athletic association where Kiki grew up playing sports, thriving in basketball and softball for the Westside Boosters. It is where her mom said, her middle child developed into a strong, young woman and met many of her life-long friends.

Wiley said, "That's kind of how we met everybody down there was through sports. My son played sports down there as well. It is just a great community."

This weekend, Kiki’s family will host their very first fundraiser. The goal is to create a sustaining pot of money that a young, female athlete could tap into if they needed help with expenses – like registration, travel, even basic equipment. Beth Wiley insists, it is exactly what her loving daughter would want.

"We even talked about possibly, even doing shoes," Wiley told Blume. "I mean, that is a big thing, too, is that a lot of the girls cannot get the proper shoes, or if the team gets shoes or something fun like that. So, you hate to see another teammate not have the same thing that everybody else had. Kiki would not want that. She had a big heart."