Hit-and-run vehicle plows into crowd, kills 16-year-old girl and injures others

A 16-year-old girl died and five others were injured after a driver plowed into a downtown Minneapolis crowd shortly after midnight Saturday.

Police arrested a 22-year-old woman, who they say drove into the crowd then fled downtown. She’s being held in jail pending possible criminal charges.

“There aren’t words to describe how tragic and senseless it is to lose a 16-year-old female over something like this,” said Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara. “There were at least a dozen people in the immediate path of the vehicle as the suspect drove through the crowd.”

A fight between teenagers and young adults precipitated the incident, O’Hara said.

Preliminary information indicates that the driver of the vehicle left the altercation to take the wheel of an SUV, drive in reverse on Hennepin Avenue, then drive the wrong way on Fifth Street North before running into a large group of people. Although the investigation is ongoing, O’Hara said video footage led him to believe “this was clearly not random.”

“We have a number of leads that we are working through, as well as a number of surveillance and cell phone video evidence that we think there could be more arrests,” O’Hara said. “There was a fight before this where it does appear that at least one female was injured significantly, prior to being run over.”

All victims were transported to the Hennepin Healthcare Hospital, including the 16-year-old girl who died there. Two 14-year-old girls and two men in their twenties were among those injured and are expected to survive. A 29-year-old woman remains in critical condition.