Family of man shot by Minneapolis police wrestles with grief, questions

Dolal Idd's family buried him Friday, grieving even as they wrestled with questions about his fatal shooting by Minneapolis police Wednesday after police say he fired a gun at them.

Hours after the 23-year-old Eden Prairie man was laid to rest in a Burnsville cemetery, his mother and older sister gathered with female family members and friends at an Eden Prairie mosque.

"It's been really hard losing him the way we lost him," Nima Ade said of her son, the fourth of 11 children. Ade's words were translated from Somali by her oldest child, 32-year-old Ikran Idd, who sat with her mother at the Irshad Islamic Center as dozens of women arrived to console and pray with Ade.

Hours before, Ade had kissed her son's forehead and said goodbye.

As they grieved, Idd's mother and sister tried to reconcile his violent death with the young man they said was depressed, but not angry, violent or delusional. Dolal was warm, gentle and quieter than his many siblings, they said. His mother's nickname for him was "Dua," which Ikran Idd said translates to blessing.

But Dolal Idd's history shows numerous contacts with law enforcement in the past four years for allegations ranging from theft to providing a false name to law enforcement and fleeing. His prior criminal record includes a 2019 conviction for illegally possessing and firing a gun in Hennepin County. The charges in that case say he fired a gun in his parents' home in 2018.

Idd was on probation for the weapons conviction, although it's not known exactly what led to Wednesday night's felony traffic stop, carried out by the Minneapolis Police Department's First Precinct Community Response Team.

The snippet of body camera video released Thursday by Police Chief Medaria Arradondo shows chaos in the parking lot of a Holiday gas station at E. 36th Street and Cedar Avenue just before and after gunfire was exchanged. An officer with his gun drawn orders Idd to put his hands up before Idd begins driving away. His exit blocked by police squad cars, Idd then appears to fire a shot toward the officers, who return fire.

A detailed dispatch log about the incident, released by the city Friday afternoon, offered few new clues about what transpired before the shooting. It begins with a shots-fired call at 6:15 p.m., seconds after the events shown in the police video.

Minutes after the shots-fired call, the log states that there are two people in the vehicle: "1 MALE DOWN…1 FEM HANDS UP."

The city says officers were "engaged in a weapons investigation" when they stopped Idd, but has provided few other details about what preceded the body camera footage.

Ade, her younger sister and Ikran Idd shook their heads when questioned about Idd's criminal record, which they disputed but did not want to discuss. They said that to the family's knowledge, Dolal Idd did not have a girlfriend, and they didn't know the identity of the woman in the car with him.

Asked if her brother used drugs or battled addiction, Ikran Idd declined to answer. She and her mother also declined to talk about his legal troubles.

Ikran Idd, a nurse, said she was the main contact for her brother's probation officer. "He was doing really good," she said, adding, "They didn't have a warrant for his arrest."

The past month had been especially difficult for the family. Idd's 26-year-old brother, Mohamed-Amin Idd, was arrested on a murder charge. He is being held in the Hennepin County jail on $1 million bail. Another brother, Dalal Idd, 25, has been in prison for more than five years for an assault conviction when he was a teenager.

Ikran Idd and her mother said Dolal wasn't close to Mohamed-Amin Idd but that he was distressed at his arrest. "He felt so much pain," Ade said.

Dolal Idd had not been living at home for the past month, his mother and sister said. He was trying to find work and build a life. Still, he often helped his mother with housework and babysitting, they said.

He wanted to learn more about Islam, and his mother said they'd talked about him moving to Egypt for a time to study the Qur'an and learn Arabic.

Dolal was just 3 when his family emigrated from Somalia. He graduated from Minnetonka High School in 2015 and briefly enrolled at Normandale Community College in Bloomington. He was interested in studying computers or pursuing work as an emergency medical technician, his sister said.

His mother recalled that she last saw her son Monday evening, when he kissed her goodbye and said, "Mom, I love you. I will come back later."

The family learned of his death when law enforcement showed up at their house early Thursday with a search warrant. Ikran Idd opened the door and was restrained, along with her parents.

Like her father, Bayle Gelle, she and her mother criticized the tactics officers used during the search. Gelle said they were "pushing us around and screaming" with large guns. Sen.-elect Omar Fateh, DFL-Minneapolis, called the treatment of the family "inhumane and unconscionable."

The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office said in a statement Friday that deputies were assisting the state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in a "knock and announce" high-risk search warrant of Idd's last known address.

Sheriff Dave Hutchinson said that based on body camera footage, he believes the deputies displayed professionalism during the encounter.

The statement said deputies came to the home at 2:15 a.m. and announced themselves several times after knocking on an outside door, which was open. It added that Idd's parents were restrained in plastic handcuffs, standard practice for adults during "high-risk" search warrants.

Staff writer Chao Xiong contributed to this report.