Minneapolis police say five people shot and injured on Lake Street
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Minneapolis police are investigating a shooting near the intersection of Lake Street and Stevens Avenue Monday morning that left five men injured, with one suffering from a life-threatening injury.
Hours after the shooting, Mayor Jacob Frey announced he is working with the state’s department of transportation to fence off the walkway near the transit stop, which O’Hara said has grown to be a trouble spot.
“This walkway has been terrible, as I’m sure anyone who lives down here or has been through here can tell you,” O’Hara said. “It's just a whole lot of people congregating that are using drugs. It's all kinds of garbage and debris.”
Frey said he has asked the state for additional law enforcement resources as soon as possible to help target those driving violent crime.
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“We are taking immediate steps to secure the area and crack down on the dealers and violent offenders who are exploiting it,” Frey said in a statement. “At the same time, we will continue to provide pathways for people battling addiction to get the help they need.”
In the second half of August, shootings in that area left three people injured in cases that remain under open investigation.
Jacfar Dakane, a security guard at Quality Tobacco just off the exit ramp from I-35 W onto Lake Street, said the amount of gunfire recently has him and others looking over their shoulders more.
“It definitely puts you on your edge, you know, because you'll never know when a shooting will happen,” he said. “It makes you worry about everybody that's walking by and whatnot.”
He said he hopes fencing off the area will help minimize shootings and is a worthwhile step to take, but he doubted it would do much to solve the problem in the long term.
”They got to start getting people into treatment centers, start getting them help, get them clean. Just shutting them down from over there, they’ll just move to another location because we’ve seen that many times before,” he said. “We’ve seen that at 31st and Lake, right under the bridge over there, just a half block up.”
In regards to Monday’s shooting, O’Hara said there are conflicting reports about how the shooting took place, and no motive for the violence has been identified.
Dozens of rounds were fired with casings found on the walkway and part of the Greenway near that intersection.
No suspect is in custody.
Monday’s shooting follows a spate of violence in Minneapolis, which killed two people Sunday.
Police say the first incident happened just before 2 a.m. on the city's south side. Police arrived to find a man with life-threatening injuries. He later died at a hospital. A second man arrived at the hospital in a private vehicle. He survived. Police say they believe he was injured as a result of the same shooting.
The second incident happened on the 1400 block of Russell Avenue North at about 7:50 a.m. In that shooting, a woman died of gunshot wounds at the scene.
No arrests have been made in either of those shootings.
