South Minneapolis shooting victim dies a day later, adding to toll of violent night

It was the second death from a series of shootings Tuesday with six victims. No arrests were made in any of the incidents.

July 9, 2020 at 3:43AM
One person was killed following a shooting outside Christ the River of Life Church in North Minneapolis Wednesday in Minneapolis.
One person was killed following a shooting outside Christ the River of Life Church in North Minneapolis Wednesday in Minneapolis. (Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Minneapolis homicide detectives were working a second day to try to find the gunmen in two fatal shootings, officials said.

The first killed one man and wounded another outside of a North Side church. In another, the victim died a day after being shot in south Minneapolis.

They were part of a series of shootings across the city Tuesday — with six victims — marking another violent day in a span of recent gun attacks.

The victims in the most recent incident were shot after gunfire erupted about 11:19 p.m. in the 2100 block of N. Emerson Avenue in the Jordan neighborhood, according to officials and police scanner traffic.

They were sitting in a car at that location when someone approached and fired several shots inside, striking the men, who were both in their 20s.

According to scanner traffic, a 911 caller from several blocks away reported hearing as many as 18 gunshots shortly before officers found the two victims on Emerson. The other man, shot in the leg and upper thigh, is expected to survive.

The incident was Minneapolis' 30th homicide of the year, according to Minneapolis Police Department data — nearly twice as many as the city had this time last year and more than the previous five-year average of about 19.

While police were still investigating the crime scene, another gunshot victim showed up at HCMC, telling hospital staff that the shooting happened somewhere "on the North Side" but refusing to provide details, officials said.

A few minutes before 10 p.m., officers were called to a shooting on the city's South Side. Police found more than 40 bullet casings from two different calibers littering the scene at the 3200 block of S. 2nd Avenue.

They found a man in his mid-20s who had been shot multiple times, including in the back; he was rushed to a nearby hospital. The man died Wednesday, police said, the city's 31st homicide of 2020.

Earlier Tuesday night, a woman in her late 20s suffering from a gunshot wound walked into the emergency room at HCMC. The driver of a vehicle that dropped the victim off told police that she had been shot near the downtown bus depot at the intersection of N. 10th Street and Hawthorne Avenue. The incident occurred just after 11 p.m.

Tuesday's violence began just before 5:45 p.m. when a 30-year-old woman was shot near a basketball court at East Phillips Park, while children played at a splash pad nearby.

The shootings continued an explosion of gun violence that has erupted in the city since the unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.

Through Sunday, 222 people had been shot across Minneapolis in 2020, a roughly 60% increase compared with the same time period in 2019, according to MPD spokesman Garrett Parten. At least eight people have been shot since then, including the six on Tuesday.

"Obviously, this gun violence is extremely concerning," Parten said at a late-night news conference outside City Hall, while urging those responsible to "embrace the sanctity of life and put down the guns."

No arrests had been made as of Wednesday morning.

about the writer

about the writer

Libor Jany

Reporter

Libor Jany is the Minneapolis crime reporter for the Star Tribune. He joined the newspaper in 2013, after stints in newsrooms in Connecticut, New Jersey, California and Mississippi. He spent his first year working out of the paper's Washington County bureau, focusing on transportation and education issues, before moving to the Dakota County team.

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