A 29-year-old man has been sentenced to home detention for hitting a police sergeant with a metal garbage can lid during unrest last year in downtown Minneapolis after false rumors spread that a man who killed himself had been shot by police.
Brayshaun L. Gibson of Minneapolis was sentenced Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court after pleading guilty to second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with the attack on Aug. 26, 2020, that rendered the officer unconscious and required his hospitalization for possible spinal damage.
Judge Kerry Meyer stayed the execution of a 21-month sentence for three years and instead put him on a year of electronic home monitoring.
"At sentencing, the state indicated the reason for [electronic home monitoring] was due to the pandemic and subsequent complications with work release," said Lacey Severins, a spokeswoman for the County Attorney's Office.
According to the charges, the sergeant was getting into his squad car near the site where an angry crowd was gathered on Nicollet Mall, when Gibson threw a 15-pound metal garbage can lid at him, striking him in the head and knocking him out.
When police found Gibson, he "admitted he became enraged over misinformation about officers shooting someone downtown, only to learn later that it was a suicide," the charges say.
The dramatic events began in midafternoon when police responded to a report of a shooting at Ramp A in the area of N. 10th Street and Currie Avenue. Eddie George Gordon, 61, died at the scene. Gordon had been in a dispute with a woman and the suspect, Eddie Frank Sole Jr., 38, who fired the fatal shot.
The woman was arrested a short time later. As police closed in on Sole along the mall, he fatally shot himself.
