Police suspect 2 shootings that left 4 dead in Minneapolis were connected and gang related

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Investigators strongly suspect that a pair of shootings three blocks apart in Minneapolis that left four people dead and two others seriously injured were connected and were gang related, the police chief said Wednesday.

The first shooting happened late Tuesday and killed three people. The second, which happened around 1 p.m. Wednesday, killed one person. A bullet fired during that shooting just barely missed two young children in a nearby vehicle, police Chief Brian O’Hara said.

The police chief said at a news conference that investigators believe all of the victims were Native Americans and that the shootings had shaken the large Indigenous community in the Phillips neighborhood south of downtown.

He told reporters that investigators were still trying to establish a link between the shootings, and he declined to speculate on a motive or give details about any suspected gang connections. He said the investigation was still at its early stages. No arrests have been made.

“We’re three blocks away. The community’s saying something’s going on here, ”he said. “We have to follow the evidence. I cannot speculate. You can make your own assumptions based off the facts.”

The killings followed a period of relative peace in Minneapolis, which like many cities saw an increase in crime during the COVID-19 pandemic and after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police.

But crime fell in many major cities last year, and Minneapolis recently went two months without a homicide until a man was shot to death April 19. It was the city’s longest period without a homicide in a decade, according to police. Authorities have credited the work of community organizations and a federal crackdown on local gang members.

“Our entire city is grieving right now,” Mayor Jacob Frey told reporters. “And we know that our Native community is feeling that trauma quite acutely.”

In the late Tuesday shooting, four people were shot in a vehicle and one on a nearby sidewalk, according to police. O’Hara said a 20-year-old woman, a 17-year-old boy and a 27-year-old man were killed. A 28-year-old man and a 20-year-old woman were taken to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. O’Hara said the man remained in grave condition Wednesday afternoon.

Wednesday’s shooting happened outside an apartment building that houses the Minneapolis offices of the Red Lake Nation tribe. A man in his 30s died, O’Hara said.

“What is even more disturbing,” he added, was that one round from the shooting went through the rear door of an SUV “and passed just beneath the legs of two children in child seats, an infant and a toddler.”

O’Hara reiterated his earlier statements that it was “very clear” that victims of the first shooting were deliberately targeted and that it was “potentially gang related.”

The chief did not say whether the fatal shootings might have been connected with another nearby shooting overnight in which a man was dropped off at a hospital with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound.

O’Hara appealed for anyone with information to come forward.

“We need everyone to stand up and say this is not OK,” he said. “And law enforcement will not rest until everyone involved in both of these incidents is brought into custody.