MINNEAPOLIS _ Minneapolis homicide detectives worked late into the night Tuesday to try to find a gunman who killed one man and wounded another outside a North Side church, officials said.
The shooting was one of at least four across the city Tuesday _ with six victims _ marking another violent day in a span of recent gun attacks.
The victims in the most recent incident were shot after gunfire erupted about 11:19 p.m. in the 2100 block of N. Emerson Avenue outside of River of Life Lutheran Church, in the Jordan neighborhood, according to officials and police scanner traffic. They were sitting in a car at that location when someone approached and fired several shots inside, striking the men, who were both in their 20s.
According to scanner traffic, a 911 caller from several blocks away reported hearing as many as 18 gunshots shortly before officers found the two victims on Emerson. The other man, shot in the leg and upper thigh, is expected to survive.
The incident was Minneapolis' 30th homicide of the year, according to MPD data _ nearly twice as many as the city had this time last year and higher than the previous five-year average of about 19.
While police were still investigating the crime scene, another gunshot victim showed up at HCMC, telling hospital staff that the shooting happened somewhere "on the North Side," but refused to provide further details, officials said.
Earlier in the night, a woman in her late-20s suffering from a gunshot wound walked into the emergency room at HCMC. The driver of a vehicle that dropped the victim off told police that she had been shot near the downtown bus depot at the intersection of N. 10th Street and Hawthorne Avenue. The incident occurred just after 11 p.m.
A few minutes before 10 p.m., officers were called to a shooting on the city's South Side. Police found more than 40 bullet casings from two different calibers littering the scene at 3200 block of S. 2nd Avenue.
They found a man in his mid-20s who had been shot multiple times, including in the back; he was rushed to a nearby hospital where he "went immediately into surgery," an MPD spokesman said. His condition wasn't available.
Tuesday's violence began just before 5:45 p.m. when a 30-year-old woman was shot near a basketball court at East Phillips Park, while children played at a splash pad nearby.
The shootings continued an explosion of gun violence that has erupted in the city since the unrest over the police killing of George Floyd.
Through Sunday, 222 people had been shot across Minneapolis, a roughly 60% increase compared with the same time period in 2019, according to MPD spokesman Garrett Parten. At least eight people have been shot since then, including the six on Tuesday.
"Obviously, this gun violence is extremely concerning," Parten said at a late-night news conference outside City Hall, while urging those responsible to "embrace the sanctity of life and put down the guns."
He said that investigators were still trying to gather information about how the various incidents transpired, and why.
No arrests had been made as of Wednesday morning.
