2nd teen slaying has Mpls. on edge

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan made an unusual appeal Thursday for North Side parents to keep their children indoors after dark, saying his investigators don't know what's driving the sudden violence that has claimed two teenagers' lives this week.

The chief's appeal came on a day of anger and frustration, culminating in an emotional evening prayer vigil, as families and neighbors tried to make sense of the deadly outbreak. City leaders promised more police patrols in north Minneapolis, but they were at a loss to say whether anything connected Wednesday's slaying of Ray'Jon Gomez, 13, to Saturday's killing of Quantell Braxton, 14, or the gunfire that targeted a peace vigil Tuesday night.

"This is something we're going to try to stop, and we need the help and support of the community," Dolan said.

Hours before Dolan spoke, neighbors denounced the slaying of Gomez, known to everyone on his block as Lil' Bow-Wow. About 9 p.m. Wednesday, he had been out riding his bike with two friends near the playground of the old Willard Elementary when someone started shooting.

Deondre Timberlake, 12, was shot in the back. Gomez, struck in the side, ran away. He was found two hours later, face down between two houses. Deondre, taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, is expected to live.

"My son is so emotionally messed up right now because he feels like he left his friend to die," said Lisa Church, Timberlake's mother. Her son said he saw Gomez fall but then get back up and run. She had to tell her son at the hospital that Gomez was dead.

Wednesday's shootings don't appear related to the killing of Braxton, 14, though the two shootings happened just a few blocks apart, Minneapolis police Capt. Amelia Huffman said. Investigators are looking at all possible motives and connections. No one has been arrested.

"It's the same old silly stuff," said V.J. Smith, a neighborhood activist with the group MAD DADS. "One neighborhood vs. a neighborhood. But they don't understand how they're impacting lives."

Gomez's father, Kevin Funchie, said he often talked with his son about violence in the neighborhood and urged him to be home before nightfall.

"Nobody is really understanding how this happened and why it happened," Funchie said. "It's just so senseless."

Funchie said his son was "really doing well" after leaving a behavioral treatment center in Anoka about a month ago. He went there to improve his grades and was to enroll Thursday in eighth grade at a nearby school.

Ron Edwards, a neighborhood activist and former member of the Police Community Relations Council, said neighbors who milled about afterward Wednesday night were "angry and frustrated" by the violence.

"The emotion is strong and very sweeping ... when you see children gunned down, happening here, and you don't have any suspects, that's really not healthy. Then people lose confidence that anyone really cares," he said.

City Council President Barbara Johnson said the tight cluster of recent shootings suggests a connection. "There's ongoing rivalries and gang activities that police monitor, and it heats up all the time. I wouldn't be surprised to see if that's behind it," she said.

Last year, the city tried unsuccessfully to get federal money to pay former gang members and others to act as street peacemakers to deter likely perpetrators and cool emotions when there's a threat of violence.

Council Member Don Samuels said he anticipates police expanding patrols that already were stepped up near North Commons Park after earlier shootings. "We try to hit hot spots and to concentrate resources where our predictors tell us that violence is most likely to occur," he said.

Police asked anyone with information to call them at 612-692-8477.

Taking responsibility

A prayer vigil Thursday evening in a weed-filled lot near W. Broadway and Lyndale Avenue N. -- the same spot where a Tuesday night vigil was interrupted by gunfire, wounding a 19-year-old woman -- at times resembled an old-fashioned revival. About four dozen participants listened to the Rev. Jerry McAfee, pastor of New Salem Missionary Baptist Church, the Rev. Brian Herron, Samuels and others ask for God's help in healing the community.

"Take away the hate, take away the madness, God, and replace it with peace," McAfee prayed.

Malik Morgan, 13, a friend of Gomez's, spent most of the vigil crying in his father's embrace, with his friend, Marvin Jones, 14, by his side. "It's sad ... our kids are dying," said Jose Morgan, Malik's father. "This is all we got. They're dying. We need them here."

What can parents do, he was asked.

"Encourage their kids more," he said. "If you have to, keep them in the house like I do. I'm not saying lock them in there, but talk to 'em more about the danger that's out there, because there's a lot of them out there."

The children "need to find something else to do. Read a book. Go find a youth center, go play some basketball."

"I do," Malik interjected.

"Video games, anything," Morgan said.

After the vigil, Samuels reiterated that it's everyone's responsibility to look after children in crisis. If adults don't reach out to them, "we have the same situation where the most vulnerable, the most frightened become the most frightening," he said.

Samuels said he's seen teenagers hanging out by a house near his street that he meant to stop and talk with. "I just haven't had the time," he said.

"I was driving by there last week and I saw a known drug dealer, a gang member, stopping by and playing with the kids," he said. "So who are they going to listen to? That's my responsibility now. I'm late, but I've got to hurry up and go over there. And we all have to do that."

The rash of shootings on the North Side runs counter to the city's crime trend.

Statistics show a 16.7 percent drop so far this year in violent crime in north Minneapolis. Aggravated assaults reported there total 198 this year, compared with 242 at this time last year.

Gomez's friends and relatives came and went Thursday from the spot where he died. At one point, a teenage boy rode his bike down the middle of Russell Avenue N., sobbing so loudly he could be heard a block away.

Staff writers Pat Pheifer, Paul Walsh and Steve Brandt contributed to this report. matt.mckinney@startribune.com • 612-673-7329 eric.roper@startribune.com • 612-673-1732