Teen slain in Minneapolis fast-food parking lot

Each time there is a killing in north Minneapolis, K.G. Wilson of Hope Ministries is among the first to arrive at the scene.

He was there again Sunday, amid the mayhem when an 18-year-old Minneapolis man was shot to death and a 15-year-old boy was wounded near a fast-food restaurant on West Broadway.

"This is about the sixth time this year," Wilson said as he made his way around the perimeter of the yellow police tape strung across Broadway and surrounding streets. "This is wrong. This is backward. This is a kid, and I'll be doing his funeral vigil. I'm 42. He should be doing mine."

Friends and relatives identified the dead man as Haywood Eaton of Minneapolis, who witnesses said was involved in a fight between two groups at the parking lot of a Burger King when he was shot.

A 15-year-old bystander, who had come over to the Burger King from a neighboring McDonald's, was shot as he tried to run away when a gun was pulled. He was taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale for treatment of non-life-threatening injuries, police said.

Another teenager was arrested after a crowd of angry spectators chased him into the area that police had blocked off. It is unknown what role if any he had played in the fight or the shooting.

A woman who witnessed the killing while waiting at a bus stop said it involved at least 10 people in two vehicles who converged on the Burger King lot.

She said one group was at the drive-through window when the other group drove by and spotted its rivals.

The woman said that about four shots were fired. She said Eaton was shot at the parking lot and then staggered about a block away before collapsing.

"They just started fighting and then they just started shooting," said the woman, who was with her daughter. "I just threw myself over my 2-year-old."

The killing was the 14th of the year in Minneapolis, a reduction of almost 50 percent from this time last year, when there had been 27 homicides, Sgt. Jesse Garcia said Sunday.

"It's still pretty safe," Garcia said. "It's been a quiet year."

Small comfort

That was of little comfort to the hundreds who gathered at the scene to mourn and vent, including Eaton's family members, who at one point turned on Wilson and a group of peace activists, cursing them when he approached to offer comfort.

"We're not going to stop doing what we're doing because of screaming," Wilson said. "I'd have to be laying down in the street [dead] before I stop doing what I'm doing."

As difficult as the afternoon was for Wilson, it was even more so for Tenanye Heard with the Peace Foundation, another peace activist group that responds to the North Side when there is a killing.

Heard's husband, Dwayne Heard, was shot to death in north Minneapolis two years ago. On Sunday, she said Eaton is the cousin of one of the members of the Peace Foundation's North Side Youth Stand Up, made up of a group of young adults dedicated to preaching peace. She said Eaton would drop by on Fridays to hang out.

"We respond to every murder; this is what we do," she said quietly. "This one is a little more personal because it was one of our youth's cousins."

The shootings, which took place shortly after 1 p.m., happened in broad daylight on a crowded avenue, but at the scene no one had given police any identity of those involved.

Wilson was not surprised.

"A lot of people are afraid to talk," Wilson said. "That's why people keep dying. We're keeping killers out on the street."

Also present at the scene was Kenny Scales, another Peace Foundation member.

Scales, at 22 just a little older than many of the youth he counsels, got a text message from Eaton's cousin shortly after the shooting on Sunday.

"My cousin Haywood was just shot today," the text message on Scales' phone said. "His mother does not know yet that her last son is now dead. Send your prayers for this [family] to the gates of heaven."

Heron Marquez Estrada • 612-673-4280