Nine people were wounded by gunfire across Minneapolis on Tuesday, including eight in a two-hour span, adding to a rash of violence since last month's unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Police: 9 people shot in separate shootings across Minneapolis, continuing violent streak
The exceptionally violent stretch played out over two hours, police said.
June 18, 2020 at 4:05AM
Police Department statistics show that a record 149 people have been shot since the start of the year; nearly half of those happened within the past three weeks.
The most recent violence started shortly after 10 p.m. Tuesday, when patrol officers responded to calls of gunfire in the 2900 block of Columbus Avenue, only to learn that a male victim had been dropped off at a hospital. A preliminary investigation showed that an argument between a group of people preceded the shooting, according to police, who offered few other details.
About 11:25 p.m., police were called to a reported drive-by shooting in the 1100 block of N. 21st Avenue, a block west of the Hawthorne Crossings strip mall. When they arrived, they found two women with gunshot wounds; officers applied a tourniquet to help save one of the women's lives, a department spokesman said. A third victim showed up later at a hospital, with a nonlife-threatening injury from the same incident, police said.
Police said that about seven minutes after the 21st Avenue shooting, gunfire broke out a few blocks east of that location, in the area of N. 5th and W. Broadway; two men were later dropped off at a hospital, both with nonlife-threatening injuries, police said.
Around the same time, two men with gunshot wounds showed up at HCMC after apparently being injured when gunfire rang out in the area of S. 38th and Chicago avenues. The block, thrust into the international spotlight after Floyd's killing by a former Minneapolis officer May 25, has long had a reputation for gang violence, police and neighbors said.
No arrests have been announced in the incidents.
The exceptionally violent stretch Tuesday night followed a shooting earlier in the day, which resulted in an hourslong standoff that ended when police realized the suspect had eluded capture.
The violence comes amid a sharp rise in shootings in the 22 days since Floyd's death. From May 26 to Tuesday, 66 people have been shot, or about 45% of the total shooting victims for the year, according to data from police.
The first week after Floyd's death saw a record 22 gunshot victims, while the following two weeks had 16 and 19 victims, respectively — all among the top five most violent weeks in the city since 2016. Overall, 149 people have been struck by gunfire so far in 2020 — the highest tally in at least the past five years.
Criminologists have noted similar patterns in other cities, most recently Baltimore, which have seen violent crime rise in the wake of a controversial police killing. MPD officials were not immediately available for comment.
In an unrelated incident, police said a man was stabbed at 12:41 a.m. Wednesday in the 300 block of W. 32nd Street. The victim reportedly told police he didn't know what happened.
On Sunday, seven people were wounded in a shootout outside the Broadway Pub & Grille, 200 W. Broadway, which officials said involved more than 100 rounds fired. One victim, Marcus Lashaun Banks Jr., 22, of Spring Lake Park, died the next day of a gunshot wound to the head, according to the Hennepin County medical examiner.
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