Alexandria residents await answers in officer-involved shooting death

ALEXANDRIA, MINN. – The police barricades on the 300 block of 4th Avenue E. were down Wednesday, and children played in the park across the street from the dilapidated white house where two undercover investigators shot and killed a person the day before.

Twenty-four hours after two Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agents fired their weapons in the fatal incident, details about what led to the shooting and the investigation that drew officers to the house remained scarce.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the St. Paul Police Department, which is investigating the shooting at the request of the BCA, had yet to identify the victim and the agents involved.

"We are working as diligently as we can to get the facts and give them to the public," St. Paul police spokesman Steve Linders said. "We want to be as transparent as possible, but it takes time to make sure it's accurate."

According to the Alexandria Police Department, two BCA agents fired their weapons at the house on Tuesday afternoon, and one person was pronounced dead at the scene.

No officers were hurt.

The shooting took place in a rundown house with peeling paint and a broken window. By Wednesday, it stood largely empty, aside from a few sticks of furniture. A large pool of blood had dried on the kitchen tiles and was visible through the broken window.

The outbreak of violence, and reports that officers had been investigating the solicitation of minors for sex, left residents reeling on a quiet street in a quiet town in the heart of central Minnesota's prairie lake country.

"It's scary. It's sad. My heart goes out to the BCA agents," said Niki Froemming, sitting in the courtyard of the apartment building across the street from the shooting scene. "It just makes me sick that something like this could happen, right across from the park."

Alexandria, a city of nearly 12,000 residents about two hours northwest of the Twin Cities, is a tight-knit community, small enough for folks to know many of their neighbors.

"I think a lot of people think something like this can't happen here," Froemming said. "But this sort of thing happens everywhere. … I think this has opened up a lot of people's eyes."

Police hadn't told them much, she said, and the neighborhood was buzzing with talk and speculation.

Jerry Dahlheimer, who owns a rental property next door, mistook the popping sound for a nail gun.

"It sounded like somebody shingling their roof," he said.

Police told him whatever had been going on in the house was not part of an ongoing operation, he said.

"It had nothing to do with the community, nothing to do with the neighborhood," he said.

St. Paul police spokesman Linders said that he could not comment on the specifics of the undercover investigation.

jennifer.brooks@startribune.com • 612-673-4008

chao.xiong@startribune.com • 612-270-4708