Police were searching for a suspect or suspects who fatally shot a man in the head Friday evening outside a BP gas station on St. Paul's East Side.

The shooting was reported about 6:30 p.m. at the station at White Bear and Maryland Avenues. Others apparently carried the wounded man into the station. Officers recovered a gun at the store, said St. Paul watch commander Eric Anderson.

The victim was not an employee of the gas station, Anderson said.

Police were trying to determine if two men who later came to Regions Hospital in St. Paul could have been connected to the shooting, Anderson said. One had been shot in the arm, according to police radio transmissions.

Four hours after the shooting, a woman who identified herself as the victim's sister came to the station, which remained closed and cordoned off with yellow police tape.

Police told her that they had good images of the shooting from a surveillance camera, she said.

The woman declined to identify her brother, who she said was 22. She said she knew of nobody who would want to hurt him, but did not want to talk further.

Neither did a half-dozen relatives and friends of the victim who gathered with her on a corner across the street as late-night sleet turned to snow and crime lab technicians combed the scene.

The woman wept and spoke on a cellphone as she waited for the Ramsey County medical examiner to arrive.

Joy Powell • 612-673-7750