Police suspect that automatic gunfire killed one person and injured two others, including a student, overnight on Halloween near the University of Minnesota campus.
Officers reported hearing two bursts of gunfire at around 2:38 a.m. Saturday. They found an adult and a juvenile male with gunshot wounds near 13th Avenue SE. and 5th Street in the Dinkytown area. Police later found a third male shot in a nearby alley.
Emergency workers gave the victims medical aid, but one died at the scene. The other two were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
Officers recovered three guns from the scene and believe that one of them belonged to the man killed in the shootings. No arrests had been made as of Saturday afternoon.
Police Chief Brian O’Hara said in a statement that one of the survivors is an undergraduate student. The shooting follows increasing reports of crime in Dinkytown, where many U students live, and O’Hara said that police will immediately increase patrols in the area.
“This was a very chaotic and dangerous situation,” O’Hara said. “Last night was obviously Halloween, and there were thousands and thousands of additional people going to bars both in downtown and Dinkytown and other places around the city. This tragedy is another reminder of how quickly gunfire can shatter lives, and we want everyone to know that … [we] are committed to working together with our community to make sure that things like this do not happen again.”
O’Hara said the automatic gunfire suggests the suspects used illegal devices that allow handguns to empty magazines with one trigger pull. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison sued gunmaker Glock last year, saying it designed and touted guns easily converted into automatic weapons.
Erik Swanson, interim chief of the University of Minnesota police, said in a statement that the wounded U student was expected to recover. He said that U police issued multiple notifications to stay clear of the area after the shots were reported, including descriptions of the suspects. U police and the university’s Office of Student Affairs were offering support to the family of the student victim, he said.
