Homicide detectives appealed for help Tuesday to find a gunman they say killed a 55-year-old Minneapolis man, apparently in a dispute over a pack of cigarettes.
Robert Tousignant died after being confronted by an unknown man near the corner of 36th and Penn avenues N. in the Cleveland neighborhood sometime around 5 a.m. Tuesday. He was sitting in a parked car outside of the transitional house where he had lived for the past 2½ years.
He was identified Tuesday by residents of FreedomWorks, a Christian-based post-prison ministry that helps people transition to employment and permanent housing. Neighbors knew him as "Bob T."
According to a police spokesman, officers were dispatched about 5:48 a.m. to the parking lot of a house at the corner of 36th and Penn, where they found a man dead in a car. The victim and suspect appeared to have known one another, the spokesman said.
One of the home's residents, Antoine Powell, said he found Tousignant unconscious in the car and tried to revive him before realizing that he had been shot. Noticing that Tousignant's red sweater was soaked in blood, Powell said he ran inside and called 911.
Powell, who moved into the home two weeks ago, said he later watched footage from a security camera trained on the lot, which captured the entire episode.
In the grainy video, Tousignant is seen sitting in the driver's seat with the door ajar, smoking and playing games on his phone, as he did most mornings before going to work, according to Powell. A man in a hooded sweatshirt approached him, motioning with his hand as if he were asking for a cigarette, Powell said. Tousignant appears to tell him no — "Bob might've said something slick," Powell suspects — and the other man leaves but returns a few moments later and pulls out a chrome handgun from his waistband, Powell said. The gunman fired a single shot from point-blank range at the back of Tousignant's head, he said.
"Bob might've still been playing his game," Powell said. "He might not have seen him walk up."
