First charges filed over July 4 fireworks chaos in Minneapolis

Two people were charged Thursday with shooting fireworks at occupied Minneapolis police squad cars during disturbances involving many hundreds of young people across the city late at night on July 4th.

A Columbia Heights teenager was charged with second-degree assault with a dangerous weapon and fleeing police in connection with one of many late-night gatherings across the city where fireworks were set off — at times targeting civilians, police or their vehicles — despite efforts by officials to prevent such mayhem.

The youth was charged by juvenile petition and appeared in court Thursday afternoon. The County Attorney's Office has not indicated whether it will seek to have his case moved to adult court, where a conviction would mean a harsher sentence. The Star Tribune typically does not identify defendants who are charged as juveniles.

Zamir A. Yassin, 18, of Minneapolis was charged later Thursday in adult court with second-degree riot with a dangerous weapon. He remained jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail and ahead of a court appearance Friday. Court records do not list an attorney for him.

The 17- and 18-year-olds were among 16 people arrested that night in the city, according to Police Chief Brian O'Hara. They are the first people charged in connection with the disturbances that saw two people wounded by gunfire, according to the Hennepin County Attorney's Office.

Five of the people arrested are adults ranging in age from 18 to 22. The others are all juveniles, said police Sgt. Garrett Parten.

A criminal complaint alleges that Yassin was one of more than 300 people who converged near Bde Maka Ska Parkway and W. 36th Street shortly after 11:30 p.m. while fireworks were "exploding all around — striking squad cars, passing vehicles, trees and other bystanders."

Yassin fired Roman candles at one moving Minneapolis police squad, leaving burn marks on the windshield, the complaint continued. A masked Yassin fled on foot, but the officer in the squad ran after him and made the arrest, the charging document read.

The petition filed against the juvenile said that officers were dispatched about 11:30 p.m. in response to 40 to 50 youths setting off fireworks in Boom Island Park near downtown and along the Mississippi River shoreline. Some of the young people were targeting squad cars with mortar fireworks and Roman candles.

Officers in one squad car activated their lights and siren, and the 17-year-old along with others in the crowd responded by directing fireworks at the vehicle, the filing continued.

"Officers had to quickly roll up their window[s], and several fireworks went off directly in front of the squad car's windshield and the passenger-side window," the charging document read. "This put the officers in fear of their safety and [in] fear of great danger."

The teen ran through the park as the squad's siren blared and its emergency lights kept flashing before he eventually stopped in the parking lot, where he was arrested. After being taken to the Juvenile Detention Center, he admitted to shooting fireworks and fleeing police, the petition noted.

"We're very fortunate that there were no serious injuries this year in these incidents because of this egregious behavior," O'Hara said during a late Wednesday afternoon news conference at City Hall.

In preparation, MPD more than doubled its staffing and sought assistance from the Minnesota State Patrol and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office.

Also, the Park Board made the Stone Arch Bridge downtown off-limits all weekend from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in hopes of preventing a repeat of last year's July 4th, which also saw fireworks launched at building, cars and first responders, and a shooting at Boom Island Park that wounded five people.