Charges: Man in SUV awakened by carjacker, shot in Loring Park by suspect who crashed in St. Paul

A 37-year-old man with a long criminal history was high on illicit drugs when he shot and critically wounded a man during a carjacking in Loring Park, then drove off and crashed the SUV twice in St. Paul while fleeing police.

Lowell Kevin Higginsbay, of Minneapolis, was charged in Ramsey County District Court with two counts of criminal vehicular operation and one count each of fleeing police and illegal drug possession in connection with the carjacking Friday in Minneapolis that left his victim in HCMC with life-threatening injuries.

Higginsbay appeared in court Monday and remains jailed in lieu of $75,000 bail. Court records do not yet list an attorney for him.

The carjacking was one of a string of violent, and at-times deadly, crimes in the city since Thursday that sent Police Chief Brian O’Hara turning for patrol assistance from other law enforcement agencies. The toll that the chief said overwhelmed his understaffed department includes three homicides and seven other shootings.

A Star Tribune database shows there have been at least 42 homicides so far this year in Minneapolis, compared to 35 at this time last year. That’s a year-over-year increase of 20% and is 75% higher than at this point in the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

According to the charges involving the carjacking and police records:

Higginsbay pulled out of an SUV a man who was sleeping in the vehicle about 2 a.m. in the 200 block of Oak Grove Street. Higginsbay then shot the man multiple times before driving off in the vehicle.

Higginsbay sped away on Sherburne before hitting a house near the intersection with Mackubin Street. The impact cracked the foundation. A woman in the home said she and her children were asleep at the time and didn’t realize what happened.

Higginsbay raced away from that location and continued to flee police through at least five stop signs before crashing head-on into a tree a little more than a mile to the northwest on Victoria Street just south of Blair Avenue.

Police saw a woman in the SUV with Higginsbay. She told an officer that she got in the vehicle in St. Paul shortly before police began pursuing the SUV. The 25-year-old woman was taken to a hospital for treatment of a broken rib.

A search by officers of Higginsbay turned up a quarter-ounce of fentanyl. He told police he didn’t know the woman and “would take full responsibility for the incident,” the charges read.

He also admitted that he had been drinking rum and other alcohol, and used heroin and methamphetamine that night. While being questioned by police, his words were slurred and he appeared to doze off.

In addition, he’s scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 9, after pleading guilty to possessing a gun while committing a violent crime stemming from when he pointed a firearm at two women in St. Paul last summer.