Viewed through the prism of memory, some years take on a character, a distinctive tone. In 2006, crime reclaimed its place on the front pages of newspapers across the United States, including the Star Tribune. And in this year of murder, Courtney Brown and Trevor Marsh were like twin poles on a violent globe. Brown died on a Saturday night in September, while walking with friends near the intersection of Lyndale Avenue North and Dowling Avenue. He had been playing basketball. The young man who shot him wanted Brown’s basketball shoes and jersey, a replica of an old Morgan State University uniform. Brown was about to start his sophomore year at Edison High.
Minneapolis had been recording homicides at a rate not seen here in a decade, but Brown’s killing, which occurred on the fringes of Minneapolis’ most troubled neighborhood, struck a chord. Spurred by media attention and aided by cooperative citizens, the police quickly arrested several suspects, including the alleged shooter. He was seventeen. Charges have since been dropped.
Trevor Marsh’s murder occurred nine miles away, bringing a half-dozen squad cars and police barricades to a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. A student at South High, he was shot in the woods near the Mississippi River, below the intersection of Thirty-second Street and West River Parkway. It was October 26. Another South High student had been murdered just three weeks earlier.
Police said little about the circumstances of Marsh’s killing, but rumors swirled at the school and throughout the Longfellow neighborhood, where violent crime is rare. Marsh had been in trouble. He was shot execution style. The killers had taken his shoes, a sign of gang involvement. In late December, Minneapolis police charged two alleged gang members, one of them only sixteen, with Marsh’s murder. According to the criminal complaint, Raine C. Neiss shot Marsh at close range near the left ear because he had lied about being a member of the Gangster Disciples. An eyewitness allegedly told investigators that Neiss was playing Russian roulette with a pistol that Marsh brought to the meeting.
Along the river, a memorial grew and morphed, withered and was revived. A framed photograph in a wicker basket, flowers, balloons. Saints candles. Briefly, a blue bandanna. In December, a Christmas wreath with handwritten notes.
These murders made for two sharply contrasting tales: One victim black, the other white. One lived north, one south. One was the epitome of innocence on the fringes of a troubled neighborhood; the other, apparently living what Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak indelicately called a “high-risk lifestyle,” albeit in a supposedly safe part of the city. And yet each death created the same anguish, confusion, and even rage.
By year’s end, Minneapolis had recorded sixty homicides, thirteen more than in 2005 and the highest number since 1996, when eighty-eight people died violently in the city. Twenty-nine—nearly half—of last year’s killings occurred in a six-square-mile area of North Minneapolis, from Glenwood Avenue north to Dowling, and from the city’s western border to the Mississippi River on the east (minus the North Loop neighborhood in the southeastern corner). According to the 2000 Census, 49,405 people live here, which equates to roughly fifty-four homicides per hundred thousand residents. Were North Minneapolis a separate city, that murder rate would put it just behind such municipalities as Compton, California, and Gary, Indiana. If Longfellow neighborhood had the same homicide rate, there would have been fifteen homicides there in 2006, instead of three; in southwest Minneapolis, there would have been thirty-four instead of the single case—the shooting of graduate student Michael Zebuhr in Uptown—that caused such an uproar last March.
Granted, last year’s total was far below the 1995 record of ninety-nine homicides, which earned the city mention as “Murderapolis” in the New York Times. And, in fact, experts routinely caution against extrapolating from homicide data for a single year, since the numbers involved are relatively small and can be influenced by many factors, including luck. But the Minneapolis-based Center for Homicide Research has used police data and other sources to locate all seven-hundred-odd homicides in Minnesota between 1996 and 2000. Zooming in on Minneapolis shows that nothing substantial has changed between those years and 2006—there are just more dots. “Homicide doesn’t occur randomly,” pointed out Dallas Drake, the center’s principal researcher. “It clusters. It clusters in space and time.”
Minneapolis is not alone. From Orlando to Oakland, Philadelphia to Indianapolis, to Milwaukee, to Little Rock, violent crime, particularly murder, was big news in 2006. Oakland, the San Francisco Chronicle reported last October, “has hit a 10-year high for homicides.” A headline in the Houston Chronicle proclaimed that same month: “Homicide rate on track to be worst in a decade.” Wrote the Orlando Sentinel on November 3: “Death brings murder count to record 44.” In August, the Philadelphia Daily News reported that “blood is spilling at a record rate this year—not only on the streets of Philly—but in supposedly friendlier locales …”
These figures in many cases rose for the second year in a row. “Among violent crimes,” the Washington Post reported, “the biggest rise in 2005 came in the number of homicides, which leapt 4.8 percent, to nearly 17,000. Some of the hardest-hit cities included Milwaukee (up 40 percent), Cleveland (38 percent), Houston (23 percent), and Phoenix (9 percent).” According to recently released FBI figures, violent crime rates accelerated four percent in the first half of 2006. This follows a 2.5 percent increase in 2005, which was the largest increase in a decade.
No matter how it’s broken down statistically, murder is ultimately just a surrogate for the broader perceptions about security and danger that profoundly shape our lives. We focus on homicides, in part, because they can be measured with relative accuracy. Few go unreported; the demarcation between life and death is clear. In legal terms, too, it makes a huge difference: When a man was shot at a downtown Minneapolis bus stop in late November, the fact that he survived meant that the shooter could not be charged with murder. Knowing that the victim survived, however, does not make those who witnessed the shooting, or who wait at that bus stop every day, feel measurably safer.
Among themselves, criminologists often speak of homicide as merely one type of aggravated assault, in which numerous factors—the shooter’s skill, proximity to advanced trauma care, and sheer luck—influence the fate of the victim. A half-inch difference in where a bullet hits can mean the difference between life and death. Researchers at Harvard University and the University of Massachusetts have estimated that the U.S. murder rate would be roughly three times higher without the advances in emergency-room medicine that have occurred since 1960. And so Minneapolis’ overall homicide rate is surely reduced by the proximity of two Level I trauma centers, at Hennepin County and North Memorial Medical Centers.
But trauma surgeons saving the lives of gunshot victims masks the true dimensions of the problem, which is not so much murder as it is violence in general. A better measure of that violence might be a tally of those who are intentionally shot, or shot at, in the city; however, such figures are unfortunately only “semi-accurate,” said Minneapolis police Lieutenant Greg Reinhardt. “You don’t see a gang member saying, ‘I want to make a report that I was shot at.’ They’re going to take care of it themselves.”
Still, even the number of reported shootings in 2006 rose twelve percent over 2005, according to police figures. Aggravated assaults, which include shootings, were up sixteen percent in the same period, and weapons-related arrests were up fourteen percent. Nearly three-quarters of Minneapolis’ homicide victims in 2006 were killed with handguns; a decade earlier, when the city had eighty-eight homicides, handguns were used in about half of them. One logical response to violent crime, then, might be to take away guns from those with a propensity for violence. Police in Kansas City, Missouri, for example, cut gun crimes nearly in half when they dramatically increased enforcement in “gun crime hot spots” of laws that prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons. They took away sixty-five percent more guns than in the previous year. Researchers have reported similar results in other cities, but the methods used to seize those guns have often proved controversial, with frequent charges that police rely on racial profiling to decide whom to search.
At universities and think tanks across the United States, a small cottage industry of researchers has tried to understand why and how murder occurs, and by extension how to curb it. There is even a peer-reviewed journal, Homicide Studies. (From its November 2006 issue: “The Murderer Next Door: Why the Mind is Designed to Kill.”) Like law-enforcement officials, those researchers routinely classify homicides in a variety of ways: by the relationship between victim and killer, say, or by looking at whether illegal drugs or gang membership were involved.
If the goal is to reduce the number of murders, those distinctions make sense. Preventing the death of a young child at the hands of a caregiver (No. 13, three-year-old Ethan Hamilton) or of an intimate partner (No. 43, Martell Delaney) requires a different strategy from, say, stopping drive-by shootings (No. 50, South High student Gennaro Knox ), violent robberies (No. 12, Michael Zebuhr), or drug-related murders (No. 16, Garey Hannah). Likewise, this analysis helps us gauge risk and protect ourselves.
But these distinctions have negative consequences, as well. They inherently place at least part of the blame for murder on the victim. One was buying illegal drugs, a second argued with a gang member, another chose to live with a violent partner. In this crude calculus, it is the random act of violence that haunts urban America. Thus, as the Star Tribune reported in the wake of that November bus-stop murder: “The downtown shooting wasn’t random … The boy was shot by another person who … knew the parties involved.” The subtext: You, dear reader, are safe.
These distinctions create a sort of economy of homicide, in which some lives are more valuable than others. And in this economy, daily news coverage becomes a rough measure of value. Only a handful of the city’s murders in 2006 made front-page news, and those often had a ready-made nickname (the Block E shooting, the Uptown murder), or at least a shocking detail (killed for a basketball jersey). The killing of Michael Zebuhr merited 7,500 words. Including the trial and its aftermath, the death of Alan Reitter, near Block E, generated more than 11,000 words. Michael Eide, shot near Twenty-ninth and Morgan Avenues North, was worth 313. Erman Edmonds, shot on the 3700 block of Columbus Avenue South, warranted 105.
At the very nadir of this process, the act of living in or even visiting a neighborhood plagued by violence tacitly becomes equated with risk. Murder, Drake says, “becomes normal. ‘That’s just a bad neighborhood.’ It becomes acceptable—expected—that homicide will occur there.”
In recent years, researchers in the field of public health have become involved in this discussion of homicide. From their perspective, murder might be seen as a disease that disproportionately afflicts men: In Minneapolis, the murder rate for men (27.9 per hundred thousand residents) is nearly eight times higher than it is for women (3.6). Homicide disproportionately affects African Americans, especially men: Their murder rate in Minneapolis (eighty-seven per hundred thousand) is about fifteen times that of white men (5.6). Homicide rates for black male teenagers (202 per hundred thousand) and black men aged twenty to twenty-nine (244 per hundred thousand) are staggeringly high. (The rates for whites are fifteen and eleven, respectively.) As with the maps plotting out murder locations in Minneapolis, these figures remain fundamentally consistent, year after year, decade after decade, both here and in many American cities.
Not that plenty of people aren’t trying to reduce the violence, using myriad strategies, both obvious (a police juvenile-crime apprehension unit, gun buy-back programs, increased patrols in hot spots, the new “Shotspotter” technology) and not so obvious (nonprofit organizations that rehabilitate problem properties).
We also talk good. Last August, Mayor Rybak spoke of public safety as a “civil right.” Quoting the mayor, the Strib wrote an impassioned editorial, pointing out how angry we would be if armed thugs terrorized the streets of Edina. Governor Pawlenty called the violence in Minneapolis “a statewide concern.” We write this article.
But lacking a coherent, systematic plan to address violence, all of the above amounts to tinkering. Some years see more cops added to the police force, or more dollars budgeted for overtime. But by leaving the problem to the cops (as though a thousand more officers might alone solve the problem), we forget that our safety depends most on voluntary adherence to law. As a city and state, we make a cost-benefit analysis, essentially deciding that a certain number of lives are expendable.
By contrast, Boston radically reduced its youth homicide rate in the 1990s with a comprehensive, multidisciplinary effort that has been dubbed the “Boston Miracle.” According to figures published in Murder Is No Accident, by Doctors Deborah Prothrow-Stith and Howard Spivak, fourteen children aged sixteen and under were killed by handguns there in 1988. By 1996, the city had in place more than a dozen antiviolence programs that involved numerous organizations, including community groups, the police, and hospitals. Schools, for example, taught an antiviolence curriculum. Hospitals assessed victims of violence to determine whether they were at risk of additional attacks; doctors, social workers and nurses attempted to prevent them much as they might try to prevent asthma attacks. Community groups sought to give young people alternatives to joining gangs. The police department instituted community policing and worked with probation officers to hold youth offenders accountable. The result: Between 1996 and 1998, Prothrow-Stith and Spivak report, not one child sixteen and under was killed with a handgun in Boston. Over an eight-year period, the city averaged just one such killing a year, compared with an average of seven per year in the preceeding eight years.
Many of these same programs have been implemented in cities all over the U.S., including Minneapolis. So what made Boston special? Even the authors of Murder Is No Accident, who were themselves primary architects of the Boston Violence Prevention Project, say they “don’t know exactly what happened.” While politicians and police chiefs are often quick to claim credit for reductions in crime, criminologists admit in moments of candor how little we truly know. “It’s a Crime What We Don’t Know About Crime,” the Washington Post titled one essay last July.
In this context, Courtney Brown’s death in September was, paradoxically, both random and predictable. There was no way to know that this “innocent” and “sweet” boy (as then-Hennepin County Attorney Amy Klobuchar described him) would die a “senseless” death, any more than we can know exactly who will die from secondhand smoke, and when. But the circumstances were volatile in Courtney Brown’s neighborhood. Similar killings outraged the city in the Murderapolis years. A similar killing will likely happen this year, too.
“When the [homicide] rates are going down, we feel relieved,” said Drake, “but there’s never a sense that we can eliminate homicide altogether. We expect a certain number. That’s a sick way of thinking. Not all countries have the homicide rate that we have.” By implication, the invocation of public health tells us something else important: Murder is preventable. So says a sign on the wall of Drake’s office. 2006 Murders
1. Janaya Nicole Allen (age 20) January 22; Penn and 14th Aves. N.
The St. Paul resident worked with disabled students as a teacher’s aid in Roseville. She was shot by her estranged boyfriend, Andre T. Johnson. Witnesses described seeing Allen often with a bloody nose and black eyes. The two were spotted together at a bar hours before Allen was shot.
Case Status: Johnson, 20, pled guilty to second-degree intentional murder and was sentenced to more than thirty-six years in jail, a longer sentence than guidelines require because he violated a Ramsey County no-contact order.
2. Jesse James Maynor (17) January 23, 6:00 p.m.; 3400 block of Girard Ave. N.
The North High student became the first of twelve teenagers murdered in Minneapolis last year. He was walking down the street when someone got out of a car and shot him.
Case Status: Under investigation
3. Victor Karpeh Garma (26) January 23, 7:30 p.m.; 4200 block of Pillsbury Ave. S.
Case Status: Reco Thomas, 20, and Clarence Medin, 18, were charged in the killing. Thomas admitted to stealing marijuana, money, and other goods from the home. He pled guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree murder and received a fifteen-year sentence. Medin is awaiting trial.
4. Thomas Lawrence Reyna (21) January 29, 5:00 a.m.; 1700 block of Fillmore St. N.E.
Reyna was stabbed in his home. His body was found in Mille Lacs County, about sixty miles northwest of
Minneapolis.
Case Status: Emilio E. Marrufo, 30, pled guilty to second-degree intentional murder and was sentenced to more than twenty-three years in prison.
5. Shedrick Jovon Turner (26) February 10, 1:40 p.m.; West Broadway and Bryant Aves. N.
Turner had exited the Digital City store after an argument earlier that day, and when he later returned another disagreement ensued. Security cameras captured an exchange among persons inside that led to one man following Turner outside and shooting him. “There’s no reaction here on Broadway,” a witness said. “It’s like that every day.”
Case Status: David I. Grady, 26, and Marcus Ross, 25, have been convicted as accomplices. David W. Allen, 32, was found guilty of illegal possession of a firearm. Grady has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison and Allen to five. Ross awaits sentencing. Police have not identified the shooter.
6. Tyhran Eugene Wallace (20) February 23; 3000 block of 4th St. N.
Police found the New Hope resident dead in the backyard of an abandoned house. He had been shot in the head.
Case Status: Police charged Lawrence A. Leslie, who was 16 at the time of the shooting. Leslie is reported to have called Wallace a “snitch” just prior to shooting him.
7. Michael Anthony Bluntson Jr. (15) February 24; 25th Ave. N. and 6th St. N.
Bluntson was shot in the face shortly after getting into an argument at a nearby store. According to a newspaper report, he had attended Edison High “but found school boring.”
Case Status: Prentis C. Jackson, 18, has been sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole for first-degree murder. Brooklyn Park resident Lemuel J. Radcliffe, 18, was charged with aiding Jackson’s getaway.
8. Thyrone Carr (42) March 1; 32nd and Emerson Aves. N.
Carr was shot and dumped out of a car.
Case Status: Jemichael McCoy, 26, and Porter Webb, 20, of Minneapolis, have been charged with second-degree murder. The incident happened after an argument about who was going to sit in the front seat of a car.
9. Melvin David Paul Jr. (28) March 9; Broadway and Dupont Aves. N.
Paul was shot while riding in a car that eventually crashed, bullet-ridden, in a parking lot. He had reportedly relocated to Minneapolis with three children after surviving Hurricane Katrina. Said Minneapolis City Council Member Don Samuels: “There has to be outrage.”
Case Status: Andrew L. Barnes, 20, faces second-degree murder charges for shooting Paul to avenge a robbery he believes was committed by Paul’s brother.
10. Michael James Eide (26) March 12, midnight; 29th and Morgan Aves. N.
Eide was shot while on his way to visit a friend.
Case Status: Under investigation
11. Victor Meza-Ortiz (27) March 13; 3700 block of Nicollet Ave. S.
Ortiz was resisting a robbery at his home, where police say prostitution took place, when he was shot. He died in the car as friends drove him to the hospital.
Case Status: Felipe Vega-Lara and Angel Morales, both 17, were charged with first-degree murder.
12. Michael Alexander Zebuhr (25) March 18, 10:00 p.m.; 31st St. W. and Girard Ave. S.
A graduate student who was visiting his family in Minneapolis, Zebuhr was shot during a robbery.
Case Status: Cousins Donte L. Jacobs and Billy Ray Johnson, both eighteen-year-old Minneapolis residents, have been accused of killing Zebuhr and are awaiting trial. Lasonya Denise Miles (age unknown) and Derrick Lamon Johnson, 34, have both pled guilty as accomplices.
13. Ethan D. Hamilton (3) location withheld by police;
March 27 The Star Tribune reported the city’s thirteenth homicide victim was three-year-old Ethan D. Hamilton. According to the criminal complaint, Aaron B. Carson, the babysitter, shook the boy so badly that he died five days later of brain trauma. Weapon listed: “hands.”
Case Status: Police say Carson, 22, got angry at his girlfriend’s disabled son and “just lost it.” He has been charged with second-degree murder. The Strib quoted his landlord as saying, “This is an absolute shock to me. He seemed like just a terrific guy.”
14. Alan David Reitter (31) April 1, 10:00 p.m.; 6th Street S. and Hennepin Ave.
Reitter, of Minnetonka, was shot in what the press dubbed “The Block E Shooting.”
Case Status: Derick Holliday, 21, who had been in AmeriCorps, helped build a house for a homeless family, and worked at the Y, was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. He killed Reitter while shooting at a man with whom he had argued at a Block E movie theater. Columnist Nick Coleman quoted Holliday’s mother after the verdict: “I might as well stop living. They gave him life for political reasons! My son is not a menace! His life is over! This is racial and political! Oh, Jesus! I’m sorry what happened to Mr. Reitter, but they didn’t give my baby a chance!”
15. Roger Dean Dorma (58) April 4; 2025 East River Rd. N.E.
Dean was Minneapolis’ oldest homicide victim of 2006. He died April 4 of “blunt force head trauma.” He appears to be the only victim who was not even mentioned in the Star Tribune.
Case Status: The police filed charges, but the Hennepin County attorney’s office declined to prosecute.
16. Garey Anthony Hannah (28) April 8; 25th St. and Bloomington Ave. S.
Hannah, reportedly a small-time drug dealer and registered sex offender, was shot on a sidewalk during a robbery attempt. Cards for Hannah’s business “Felonious Entertainment” were found in his pockets, along with a small amount of marijuana.
Case Status: Coon Rapids resident Myron L. Benais, 28, was found guilty of second-degree murder while committing a felony and sentenced to more than twelve years behind bars.
17. Tina Lavette Bryant (27) April 16; 36th and Girard Aves. N.
Bryant was sitting in a parked car with two men when someone approached and fired into the car. A confidential informant told police the shooter, Leon N. Austin, 20, was involved in an ongoing dispute with Bryant over drug territory. Her companions were not hit.
Case Status: Austin pled guilty to second-degree murder.
18. Clarence David Meat, Jr. (24) May 3; 2000 block of 34th St. E.
Meat, who grew up on the Leech Lake Indian reservation and was taking the spring semester off from Harvard University, was shot after spraying graffiti on a duplex.
Case Status: Alejandro Luna, 17, who police say is “associated” with the Sureno gang, was charged with second-degree murder.
19. Christopher Randy Lynch (19) May 3; 600 block of Thomas Ave. N.
Lynch and his cousin Jermaine Mack-Lynch (who is affiliated with the Tre Tre Crips gang and accused of murdering Toua Xiong) were walking down the street when they saw a car containing three people believed to be members of the 19 Block Dipsets, a rival gang. Two people emerged from the car and pursued Lynch on foot, while the driver followed Mack-Lynch. Witnesses report seeing Lynch, who was not gang affiliated, confronted by two assailants with his hands in the air to indicate that he was unarmed. He was shot more than ten times execution style.
Case Status: Jonard B. McDaniel, 20, of Brooklyn Park, was convicted of aiding and abetting first-degree murder and committing a crime to benefit a gang. Two co-defendants, Cornelius H. Jackson, 20, and Lamonte R. Martin, 18, are pending trial for first-degree murder.
20. Erman Zelafonte Edmonds (45) May 6, 6:30 a.m.; 3700 block of Columbus Ave. S.
A pedestrian found the body of Edmonds in front of a home. Police think he was shot near 38th and Chicago.
Case Status: Under investigation
21. Darrion McClinton (21) May 20; 26 St. and Cedar Ave. S.
The Brooklyn Park resident was shot in an alley while sitting in a car.
Case Status: Under investigation
22. Don Evans (42) May 25, 4:00 p.m.; 3000 block of Oliver Ave. N.
Evans returned home from work, began complaining about his life, and when his wife left the room he followed her, beat her, chased her out of the house, threw objects at her and threatened her with a knife. A family friend, Sennai Johnson Nerayo, stepped in and fought with Evans before shooting him fatally in the leg and abdomen.
Case Status: Sennai Johnson Nerayo, 20, pled guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to four years in prison.
23. James Clifford Roberts (44) June 2; 2nd Street N. and West Broadway
The Minneapolis resident was shot while sitting in a car near a bar, which had just closed. A man who was with Roberts was also shot but survived.
Case Status: Deaunteze Bobo, 19, was charged with first-degree murder for driving the SUV from which a companion shot and killed Roberts. According to Bobo, he and his companion had previously gotten into an argument with Roberts. It appears the gunman has yet to be charged.
24. Mandel Leguy Roy (30) June 7, 2:00 a.m.; Lake Street and 21st Ave. S.
Roy’s girlfriend told police he was in a heated discussion at a friend’s house with a man known as “Rich.” As they were leaving the house, Rich shot Roy several times. Doctors at Hennepin County Medical Center were unable to save him.
Case Status: Richard J. Patterson, 24, and Antonio I. Williams, 20, have been charged with first-degree murder.
25. Theresa Marie Keavy (52) June 13; 26th St. and 26th Ave. S.
Keavy died fourteen years after being assaulted outside a bar. When the medical examiner ruled she died as a result of injuries sustained during the crime, her death was classified as a homicide.
Case Status: Police are investigating, though the chances of solving this crime so long after the attack are slim.
26. Levon Deshun Carothers (26) June 15; 35th and Penn Aves. N.
A resident of Brooklyn Center, Carothers was shot while sitting in a car. A man who was with Carothers was treated for gunshot wounds at North Memorial and survived.
Case Status: Under investigation
27. Brian Taveris Cole (18) June 17; 8th and Oliver Aves. N.
Cole, who played basketball at North High and had been recruited by colleges, was shot in the arm and neck during the city’s Juneteenth Festival celebrating the end of slavery. The shots were fired from a car. The Strib put Doug Grow’s column about Cole on the front page. “We think he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” a police officer said. “In this case,” Grow wrote, “the wrong place meant being a block from home.”
Case Status: An arrest was made in July but no charges were filed.
28. Timeka Lashae Vaughn (28) June 20, midnight; 2700 block of Penn Ave. N.
The St. Louis Park mother of four was shot while sitting in a car. Police think she had just dropped off a friend.
Case Status: Under investigation
29. Anthony Manuel Baca (24) June 21, 7:00 p.m.; 38th St. E. and 22nd Ave. S.
Baca was driving when someone in another car shot him.
Case Status: Under investigation
30. Kenneth Laurance O’Brien (37) June 23; Aldrich and 31st Ave. N.
O’Brien, a Hastings resident, was shot during a drug deal. According to the criminal complaint, O’Brien grabbed the crack from his dealer, stuffed it in his mouth, and tried to drive away without paying. Court documents say a plastic baggie of crack was found in his mouth.
Case Status: The dealer, Charles C. Epps, a twenty-nine-year-old of Maple Grove, has been charged with second-degree murder. The criminal complaint reports that Epps is a member of Chicago’s G.D. Mob gang.
31. Paris Partee Furcron (29) June 24; 3300 block of 5th Ave. S.
The Burnsville resident was shot in a house where, police say, Furcron had taken the two suspects to buy marijuana.
Case Status: Alonzo J. Graham, 19, and Durell D. Bobo, 18, pled guilty to aiding and abetting second-degree intentional murder and attempted aggravated robbery in the first degree. Bobo’s sentence is pending. Graham’s pleas were withdrawn. He will face a jury trial in April.
32. Mark Joseph Timot Shields (25) June 30; 3800 block of Bryant Ave. N.
Timot was stabbed in the neck outside a home after getting into an argument with another man. He was the tenth homicide victim to die in June, making it the city’s deadliest month.
Case Status: Police charged thirty-year-old John B. Lee, of Minneapolis, with second-degree intentional murder.
33. Michael Diontry Coleman (4 months) July 3; 2500 block of Pleasant Ave. S.
Minneapolis’ youngest homicide victim was suffocated at home.
Case Status: The infant’s father, Paul U. T. Coleman, 21, was charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter. Child protection officials had previously removed Coleman’s older children from the home.
34. Joseph Stanley Rogers (21) July 4; 35th St. and Chicago Ave. S.
Rogers was shot and died inside a convenience store.
Case Status: Police arrested and charged twenty-year-old Preston D. Bobo with second-degree murder and committing a crime for the benefit of a gang, allegedly the Rolling 30s Bloods. Bobo pled guilty to second-degree murder in January.
35. Marcus Darrell White (19) July 13, 5:00 p.m.; Broadway and Dupont Aves. N.
White became the fourth person shot near this busy section of Broadway, which city leaders have vowed for years to revitalize. Police say an argument led to the shooting.
Case Status: James A. Banks, 20, was charged with second-degree murder, second-degree assault, and fifth-degree possession of a controlled substance.
36. Valentine Durray Riley (29) July 22; 3500 block of Newton Ave. N.
Riley, who had reportedly changed his name to Pestelence V.D. El- Shabazz, was shot through a window of his home. His fiancée was also shot but survived. Five children, ages 5 to 13, were home at the time.
Case Status: Under investigation
37. Lee Fong (19) July 22, 7:00 p.m.; 4th St. N. and 34th Ave. N.
The first of three people shot and killed by Minneapolis police in 2006. According to the police, officers observed Fong participate in what looked like a drug transaction. Officers chased Fong, who appeared to have a gun, to Cityview School, where he was shot. Police say they found a loaded semiautomatic handgun at the scene.
Case Status: Under investigation
38. Sterling Dwight Horton (17) July 25, midnight; 1400 block of Irving Ave. N.
Police found Horton two blocks from home. His obituary stated that he was preceded in death by his grandparents, his father, two sisters, and a brother, leaving behind his mother and one brother.
Case Status: Under investigation
39. Styles Peterson Moore (30) July 25, 3:00 a.m.; West Broadway and I-94
Styles, who had no permanent address, was shot and found at a McDonald’s drive-through. It was the fifth shooting of the year on that stretch of Broadway.
Case Status: Under investigation
40. Isalena Bernice Jones (22) July 29, 4:00 a.m.; 2100 block of Lyndale Ave. N.
Jones was shot. Another woman was shot in the chest but survived after being treated at HCMC.
Case Status: Under investigation
41. Toua Xiong (20) August 6; 2900 block of Colfax Ave. N.
Xiong, a graduate of North High, was delivering forty-five dollars’ worth of pizza to a home where he was shot.
Case Status: Police charged twenty-one-year-old Jermaine Mack-Lynch, of Minneapolis, with first-degree intentional murder. According to police he is part of the Tre Tre Crips gang.
42. Jose Guillermo Aguilar-Perez (32) August 8, 2:00 a.m.; 2500 block of Nicollet Ave. S.
Auguilar-Perez was shot in the back of the head after an argument.
Case Status: Police arrested St. Paul resident Fred S. Jones, 30, and he pled guilty to second-degree unintentional murder and was sentenced to more than sixteen years in prison. He was allegedly buying drugs from Perez.
43. Martell Joseph Dionte Delaney (20) August 20, noon; 1700 block of Fremont Ave. N.
According to police, Delaney was stabbed after a dispute with his girlfriend, who says he pushed her and threw an iron at her.
Case Status: Sincerae S. Douglas, 21, was charged with first-degree murder.
44. Malaya Douglas (2) August 27; Northeast Minneapolis
The Star Tribune reported that two-year-old Malaya Douglas fell down the stairs of her Northeast Minneapolis home. She had reportedly been in foster care and was living with her father and stepmother at the time of her death.
Case Status: Under investigation
46. Courtney Brown (15) September 2; 3800 block of Lyndale Ave. N.
Brown was shot in the heart. The shooter allegedly wanted his shoes and basketball jersey. The Star Tribune quoted one woman who lives near where Brown was killed: “I don’t drink, but I am today. I’m scared to death. I’m petrified. I don’t feel safe. We need more cops on the streets.”
Case Status: Police arrested Darryl D. Johnson Jr., 17, of Minneapolis. He is in jail awaiting trial on first degree murder charges. Police also arrested several alleged accomplices, including a thirteen-year-old boy.
47. Irene Monique Burks (22) September 12; 2500 block of 12th Ave. S.
Burks was shot outside a home by someone who got out of a car. She was with a seven-year-old girl.
Case Status: Under investigation
48. Dominic Aries Felder (27) September 20; 40th St. and Bloomington Ave. S.
The second police shooting of the year. According to news reports, police were responding to a 911 report of a violent domestic incident when Felder resisted arrest and “one of the officers’ guns allegedly became part of the struggle.” Felder had two children.
Case Status: A grand jury has cleared the two officers, Jason King and Lawrence Loonsfoot.
49. Marcus Anthony Black (36) September 29, 2:00 a.m.; 1500 block of Queen Ave. N.
Black was stabbed in the heart after getting into an argument with his girlfriend over the key to their car.
Case Status: Melissa J. Jones, 36, was arrested after being found by police kneeling over Black’s body in the street. She was charged with second-degree murder. Police say she told them she had been drinking and using drugs.
50. Gennaro Knox (16) October 5; 2300 block of Elliot Ave. S.
Knox, a South High student, was killed in a drive-by shooting. The shooters mistook him for an associate of a rival gang. After a known Bloods gang member was shot around 9:50 p.m., other Bloods allegedly started looking for the shooter. Two Bogus Boys gang members were shot at near 28th and Nicollet, and identified the shooters as Bloods gang members. Minutes later, around 10:30 p.m., Knox was shot near the house of a known Tens gang member. Knox was not affiliated with a gang. Two other teenagers were shot on the same block eleven days later, but survived.
Case Status: James E. Morris and Jeremy Jackson, both 20 and members of the Bloods gang, have been charged with second-degree murder for the benefit of a gang.
51. Trevor Robert Marsh (17) October 26; Mississippi River near Lake Street
Marsh became the second South High student in a three-week period to die violently. His body was found near the Mississippi River two blocks south of the Lake Street Bridge.
Case Status: Raine C. Neiss, 16, was charged as an accomplice after the fact and with committing a crime for the benefit of a gang. Tia M. Dropick, 18,and George M. Boleo were also charged as accomplices. An unidentified sixteen-year-old male has been charged with murder in the second degree and crime for the benefit of a gang. A fifteen-year-old male has been arrested for involvement with the shooting.
52. Wayne Reyes (42) October 28; Hiawatha Ave. and 42nd St.
Reyes was the third person shot by Minneapolis police last year. According to police, he had stabbed his girlfriend and a friend, and then fled in a pickup. Officers pulled him over and shot him when he brandished a sawed-off shotgun.
Case Status: Under investigation
53. Damon Lavelle Smith (22) November 5; 2000 block of 3rd Ave. S.
Smith was stabbed to death on his birthday at the apartment he shared with his girlfriend.
Case Status: Police charged Smith’s nineteen-year-old girlfriend, Delisle Navant-Ware, with second-degree murder. She told police that she and Smith had been arguing.
54. Tou Vue (18) November 9; Plymouth and Sheridan Aves. N.
The Minneapolis resident was shot while riding in a car.
Case Status: Under investigation
55. Yvonne Rita Martin (47) November 14; 800 block of Sheridan Ave. N.
Martin, known as Tootsie, died of “trauma” at her home. According to a WCCO report, just a few days earlier she had driven a bus for church leaders touring the North Side.
Case Status: Under investigation
56. Jason L. Hatcher (24) November 17, 2:30 a.m.; 2800 block of Marshall Ave. N.E.
Hatcher was shot while riding in a car. Police say the shooting was gang related. Two other passengers were shot—one in the eye—and survived after being treated at HCMC.
Case Status: Police charged Taporius Paige, 24, of St. Paul with second-degree murder. Michael B. Bynum, 25, was charged with felony accomplice after the fact (six hours prior to the gunfight that killed Hatcher, Bynum shot at Hatcher in a convenience-store parking lot). A third man, Angelo N. Lee, 27, has been charged with second-degree murder and drive-by shooting.
57. Anthony Hinton (40) November 18, 2:30 a.m.; 1400 block of 19th St. E.
Hinton was shot in the chest during an apparent robbery at his duplex.
Case Status: Under investigation
58. Graeme Grothe (27) November 18; 1900 block of 3rd Ave. S.
Grothe was found dead in his apartment. His death had originally been classified as an overdose, but the medical examiner later determined that blunt force head trauma contributed to his death.
Case Status: Under investigation
59. Sohail Azizi (17) November 22, 2:30 p.m.; Polk Street and 23rd Ave. N.E.
Azizi was the twelfth Minneapolis teenager to die violently in 2006. He was shot while sitting with a companion in a car. The companion was also shot but survived. According to the criminal complaint, one shooter said Azizi “was always arguing with him.” Police think drugs were involved. The victim’s brother attests that Azizi’s death had nothing to do with drugs, that the worst he had ever done was smoke cigarettes.
Case Status: Police have charged three men with first-degree murder: Victor D. Cole, 26, who is homeless; Wayne C. Armstrong-Morrow, 20, no permanent address; and Marcus C. Gamble, 24, of St. Paul.
60. Linda J. Aubuchon (44) December 5; Spruce Place near Loring Park
Police found her at her apartment. She died of multiple sharp-force injuries and had been dead several days before neighbors noticed an odor coming from the apartment.
Case Status: Under investigation
