Friends remember 19-year-old streetracing spectator fatally shot by stray bullets

Vanessa Jensen had recently started mentioning to her mom that she wanted to check out a Minneapolis street race. But Rachel Jensen warned her 19-year-old daughter not to join the group of spectators.

"I told her, 'stay away from those — it's just not a good idea,' " Rachel Jensen said Sunday, hours after a couple hundred of her daughter's friends met at White Bear Lake High School to release balloons in Vanessa's memory.

She was one of two people struck by stray bullets while watching illegal street racing in Minneapolis on Saturday. The other victim has not been identified.

This year has brought a surge of street racing, both in Minneapolis and across the country. Pandemic-related closures meant less traffic, clearing normally clogged highways.

But even as businesses open up and more traffic returns, the "takeovers" of intersections in the Twin Cities can draw upward of 200 vehicles. The racers block roads and even interstates to keep police away, and spectators line up to watch as the drivers perform stunts, which can damage roads and prove dangerous.

"The important thing to remember is that this is not simply street racing," said Minneapolis police spokesman John Elder. "This is nothing short of pure criminal behavior."

Racers have also taken to throwing rocks and aiming fireworks at police officers trying to intervene, Elder said. And the department's limited resources and staffing have made it all the more difficult to respond. The department is working with the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, Metro Transit police, the Minnesota State Patrol and other agencies to address the problem, he said.

Elder said law enforcement officers have made arrests and recovered weapons from the racers.

Several other states are fighting back against street racing with new laws.

Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed a bill that mandates at least 10 days of jail time for all drag racing convictions and requires people convicted a third time within five years to forfeit their vehicles.

In New York City, authorities received more than 1,000 drag racing complaints over six months last year — a nearly fivefold increase over the same period in 2019.

In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law in March a bill that allows state troopers to respond to incidents in cities. On New Year's Eve, drivers blocked traffic on an interstate highway in Jackson, the state capital, for an hour while they spun out and did donuts, etching circles in the pavement.

The highway patrol headquarters was nearby, but troopers couldn't respond because they were prohibited from handling incidents in cities with more than 15,000 people. That prohibition will be lifted when the new law takes effect next month.

Vanessa Jensen was shot three times — once in both arms and once in the chest. She was with three of her cousins and a friend, all out to watch the street races in northeast Minneapolis. They heard what they thought were fireworks and they started running to her car when they realized the sounds were gunshots. Vanessa had already been shot by the time they reached the truck. Another bullet pierced the windshield and she started losing consciousness. Her cousins drove her to North Memorial Health Hospital, but she died just as they were pulling up around 1:30 a.m.

"She was going somewhere and she had a lot of potential," Rachel Jensen said of her daughter, whom she described as family-oriented, always positive and fiercely independent. "That potential was ripped away because of one night of her being a normal teenager."

The second homicide on Saturday morning, also at a street-racing scene, was reported at 1:48 a.m. Officers were called to the area of E. Lake Street, under the bridge that goes over Hiawatha Avenue. There they found a young man or teenage boy with a gunshot wound and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. He was taken to HCMC, where he died.

The two deaths, along with another on Saturday, brought the number of homicides in Minneapolis to 38 this year and added to the list of young people who have been shot and killed in Minneapolis in recent weeks.

"Mayor [Jacob] Frey and Chief [Medaria] Arradondo have requested support from law enforcement agencies throughout the region amid the rise in crime," a spokesman for Frey said on Sunday.

"They will seek to formalize agreements for ongoing and targeted support with those agencies in the weeks ahead."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Mara Klecker • 612-673-4440