Deadly shooting near Minneapolis homeless encampment; community members say they’re ‘fed up’

1 killed, 1 injured in shooting early Wednesday

1 killed, 1 injured in shooting early Wednesday

Minneapolis Police say one person was killed and another was injured in a shooting Wednesday morning near a homeless encampment.

Officers responded to a ShotSpotter activation about a potential shooting in an alley on the 2600 block of 17th Avenue South around 4:40 a.m. Wednesday.

When they arrived, Minneapolis Chief of Police Brian O’Hara said they found two men, a 20-year-old who had been shot in the head and a man in his 30s who had been shot in the neck.

O’Hara said the 20-year-old was pronounced dead at the scene, while the other man was taken to the hospital, where he is in stable condition.

The victim was identified Thursday as Roland Scott Littleowl.

He added that the department has “significant information” regarding a suspect but said there is no known motive.

The area where the shooting took place is a known homeless encampment, according to O’Hara, though it is unknown if anyone involved in the shooting was a part of the encampment. It is also believed that neither of the two men who were shot had fired at each other and that a third person is responsible.

“Just a couple of hours ago, we were here last night at the American Indian Center, where we heard from a whole lot of community members — who have just been kind of fed up with a lot of the crime and the violence and the drug use, open drug use, that’s been associated with a lot of these encampments,” O’Hara said.

The chief of police said it’s the second time police have responded to gunfire near a homeless encampment in the last month.

O’Hara said once the crime scene had been cleared, police would assist the city in clearing out the encampment.