Man accused of fatally shooting MPD Officer Jamal Mitchell had been on the run for two years
Court records reveal the man accused by state investigators of ambushing and fatally shooting Minneapolis Police Officer Jamal Mitchell was on the run at the time, evading a warrant for his arrest for nearly two years.
Mustafa Mohamed, 35, was not legally allowed to have a gun because of a prior felony conviction, and his criminal history dated back nearly 20 years.
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In 2007, Mohamed was convicted of first-degree burglary of a Minneapolis home in 2006, during which a woman living there was assaulted, according to court records.
Mohamed was barred from having a gun ever since.
He was still on probation for that case in 2008, when he was arrested and later convicted of robbing a Minneapolis auto parts store.
Then, in 2013, he and a few other men were stopped by Eden Prairie Police Officers, who reported smelling “the odor of burnt marijuana.” They were reportedly standing near a minivan.
The first officer on scene — according to his own account of events listed in a court filing — used force, tasing Mohamed, claiming he was defiant and had walked away from where police were attempting to pat the men down at the rear of the minivan, to the front driver’s side of the vehicle. There, the officer found Mohamed “lying on the ground.”
“I could not see Mohamed’s hands, so I deployed my taser,” he wrote.
Police never located drugs, according to the police narrative.
They did report finding a handgun after handcuffing Mohamed. It was “tucked behind the front driver’s side wheel of the minivan,” next to where Mohamed “lied down” and was subsequently tased.
An ammunition magazine and single bullet matching the gun were found on Mohamed’s person, according to the criminal complaint.
The other men who were also stopped by officers were reportedly released following Mohamed’s arrest.
The case was ultimately escalated to federal court, where Mohamed was convicted of illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition. He was sentenced in 2015 to eight years in prison.
Mohamed resurfaced in court records next in 2022, again accused of illegal possession of a firearm.
He made bond and was released to electronic home monitoring in August 2022.
In September 2022, a Hennepin County District Court judge removed the electronic home monitoring requirement, and in November, Mohamed failed to appear in court.
The warrant issued for his arrest that day remained active until Sunday, when state investigators with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension released his name in relation to Thursday’s deadly shootout.
Orders to remove electronic home monitoring, even a month later, are not necessarily unusual, a subject matter expert explained. Although, it’s not immediately clear why the decision was made in this case, according to publicly available court records. The judge’s order noted that prosecutors did not object.
It’s also unclear as of this report how Mohamed got access to the gun he’s accused of repeatedly shooting and killing Officer Mitchell with. Federal court records noted that the gun confiscated by police in 2013 was stolen during a burglary in Fridley the prior year.
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