Overnight shooting leaves 4 kids injured in Minneapolis

A shooting around 1 a.m. Sunday left four children injured — one critically.

According to Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O’Hara, officers were notified of several ShotSpotter activations on the 1200 block of West Broadway Avenue. While responding, the officers were also notified of a 911 call stating that there was a vehicle with multiple people shot inside on the 1400 block of Plymouth Avenue North.

Officers found five children inside the car, four of whom had gunshot wounds. The injured included two boys and two girls, ages 11-14 years old, police said. They were brought to the hospital and the fifth juvenile was arrested, as the vehicle they were in was stolen.

Three of the children had non-life-threatening injuries, but one of the girls was shot in the head. O’Hara said she is in critical but stable condition.

Police said that preliminary information indicates that the group was driving a stolen Kia when someone driving a dark-colored sedan started following them and later shot at them with fully automatic gunfire. O’Hara added that around 30 pieces of ballistic evidence were recovered from the scene, but it’s possible even more rounds were fired, with some of the casings being in the sedan.

“This is a tremendous problem we’ve been having over the past two years — juveniles joyriding in stolen cars and then becoming involved in more and more serious crime,” O’Hara said. “We’ve noticed this year that the theft of Kias and Hyundais is down by about a quarter, and for most of the summer, Kias and Hyundais were less than half of all the vehicles stolen in the city.”

O’Hara noted that there was a slight uptick in the number of stolen Kias and Hyundais in the past month but said that while fewer of these cars are being stolen, the juvenile crime associated with the thefts has become more brazen. He added that there have been more aggravated assaults, robberies, hit-and-runs and other serious crimes more frequently committed by those involved in the vehicle thefts.

“I think, in a lot of ways, we are failing to deter this activity,” he said. “Two of the five juveniles involved in this incident were arrested not even two weeks ago for being in a stolen car.”

“Four kids shot between 11-14[years old] is outrageous,” O’Hara added. “And everyone should be up in arms over it. The police are doing everything that we can in response to this, but we can’t keep responding after the fact, we can’t keep arresting these kids. More needs to be done to deter this type of activity in the first place.”

When asked how to deter juveniles from stealing vehicles, O’Hara said he feels there haven’t been adequate consequences for the teens who have been arrested,