7 people shot, 1 dead overnight in Minneapolis; fewest July 4th weekend shooting victims in years, chief says
Minneapolis police on Monday reported back-to-back shootings overnight across the city.
Seven people were shot in all, including an 18-year-old who police said died from his injuries.
The eventful Sunday night began just before 8 p.m. on Eat Street. According to the police incident report, an argument is believed to have escalated into gunfire near the corner of 27th Street East and Nicollet Avenue, and officers arrived to find the 18-year-old who had been shot. He later died.
An hour later, a shooting broke out on the city’s Northside, near north Dowling and Fremont avenues. There, officers reported finding a 17-year-old girl shot and in serious condition, sitting in a car.
Later, a 30-year-old man showed up at the hospital with gunshot wounds, reportedly from the same scene.
Then, as the bars closed downtown around 2:30 a.m., three more adults were hit by bullets outside Augie’s Bourbon Street Cabaret.
The seventh gunshot victim — a 16-year-old — was brought to HCMC in a stolen car around 1:30 a.m.
Police said he was uncooperative so they don’t know where the shooting happened.
“There is obviously a pattern with people getting drunk, and then going to get guns out of cars and using them, you know, over complete foolishness,” Police Chief Brian O’Hara said addressing journalists on Monday.
It was the second time O’Hara has addressed crime related to the long holiday weekend — the first after fireworks thrown by rowdy crowds of young people erupted on the Fourth of July.
O’Hara emphasized that the shooting victims on Sunday were the first of the four-day weekend.
“July 4, July 5, July 6, zero incidents. That’s the first time in years that’s happened,” he said. “Of course, that doesn’t, you know, negate what we saw last night, which was just a cluster of violence. But at the same time, it is fewer shooting victims so far this month than even in 2019, so things need to be kept in perspective.”
Overall, O’Hara called the crime response and activity over the long weekend “progress.”
“It’s better than last year. We’re gonna meet, we’ll again go through our plans, figure out what we can do better,” O’Hara said. “Last night, that was disappointing because it would have been great to finish out the weekend completely without anyone shot at all. And we came close to doing that.”
No arrests have been made related to the overnight shootings.