A shooting in Dinkytown early Saturday morning left a 24-year-old woman injured. University of Minnesota officials say there is no ongoing threat to students’ safety.
The shooting is the second in Dinkytown in two months. A 20-year-old man was injured during a shooting outside the Marshall apartment complex at about 12:45 a.m. on May 25.
On Saturday, officers responded to a shooting near the intersection of Fourth Street Southeast and 14th Avenue Southeast at about 1:15 a.m., after a woman, who is not a University of Minnesota student, was shot in the arm, according to a police report. The victim received treatment at Hennepin County Medical Center for non-life threatening injuries.
The shot was fired following an argument between a group of people sitting in parked vehicles and a group of pedestrians on the sidewalk, according to a Minneapolis Police Department Facebook post shared with University students in a Public Safety Update email from Vice President for University Services Pam Wheelock.
Austin Oakes was in Dinkytown visiting friends when the fight broke out.
Oakes said he was standing outside Five Guys Burgers and Fries when two men outside the restaurant started arguing. The pair then crossed the street and began yelling at
another group of people in front of Potbelly Sandwich Shop, he said.
“So the fight went from two people to eight people, and then someone started yelling, ‘Get your guns,’” Oakes said.
One of the men opened the trunk of a vehicle, revealing a gun, and fired two shots in the air, Oakes said. He said the larger group of people was walking away from the shooter when he fired multiple shots at them. The MPD Facebook post said the suspect fired only one shot from within a gray vehicle.
“It was crazy. One of the girls fell to the ground right away,” Oakes said. “I thought I saw someone die.”
No suspects are in custody, said Minneapolis Police Department spokesman Scott Seroka, adding that the incident wasn’t random and the victim was the intended assault target.
Computer science junior Chris Hamling was nearby at Mesa Pizza when the incident took place.
He said a man ran into the restaurant yelling that someone had been shot, but Hamling said he doubted the severity of the situation because people continued to wait in line for pizza.
“It wasn’t at all what you’d expect from a group of people 50 feet from a shooting,” he said.
Within minutes, Hamling said, an ambulance and police officers arrived at the scene and roped off the street.
“It was obviously a little more serious than everyone originally thought,” Hamling said.
Normally, the University doesn’t issue public safety updates for incidents that aren’t an ongoing threat to students’ safety, said University spokesman Tim Busse. Officials chose to do so this time, he said, to pass along a request for more information they received from the anonymous tip hotline, Crime Stoppers of Minnesota. The University
also emailed an update because MPD posted a description of the incident and suspect to its Facebook page, Busse said.
