Gunfire from at least two shooters erupted after dark Sunday in the same block of Uptown where a fatal shooting occurred two days earlier, officials in Minneapolis said Monday.
Police Sgt. Garrett Parten said the suspects caused an array of damage Sunday to buildings and vehicles in the 2900 block of S. Fremont Avenue.
The gunfire started about 9 p.m. and broke building windows and struck a fire sprinkler in a vacant apartment, which led to flooding, Parten said. Two women reported being injured from broken glass, the sergeant said.
“Preliminary information indicates that shots were fired from a vehicle and from an individual on foot,” said the police spokesman, who added that no one has been arrested.
Zoë Jackson, a Star Tribune news reporter who was off duty at the time, said she was among about 20 people outside the Lagoon Theatre after a movie when “we heard several shots in rapid succession, like 10 to 20. … We all scattered [and] ran behind the theater.”
Jackson said that within a handful of minutes, as she and the others “were trying to figure out what to do [and] where to go, there were five to 10 more shots … like half a block from where we were.”
She said she and others “waited a beat in my friend’s apartment who lives by the greenway before we all walked back to our cars and bikes. When we came back out, the police had Lagoon [Avenue] and Lake [Street] already taped off.”
Anna Boone, a Star Tribune digital designer who was with Jackson, said, “At first, we thought it might be a car backfiring, but after it continued for longer than a couple bangs, the crowd began running to around the back of the theater.”
Parten also said Monday that police are continuing to look for who shot and killed a 21-year-old man in the same block Friday night.
Vintrez Lamont Johnson, of Minneapolis, was shot several times shortly before 9 p.m., the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said. Johnson died 30 minutes later at HCMC, the examiner’s office added.
Officers who had responded to reports of gunfire found the mortally wounded Johnson and a building and a vehicle that had been hit by bullets, supporting the belief that Johnson was shot outdoors.
Police have yet to address whether these two shootings in the same block two days apart are related.
Anyone with information about these crimes can send anonymous tips by calling 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or by sending the information online at CrimeStoppersMN.org.
