3 dead in Minneapolis from unrelated weekend attacks

Violent attacks in three Minneapolis neighborhoods, including two fatal shootings, left three men dead over the weekend.

After going nearly a month before recording its first homicide for 2014 on Jan. 25, the shootings bring the city's 2014 total to six, the same number as on this date last year. Four of this year's deaths happened within the last three weeks.

Anthony Fairbanks, 23, of Minneapolis was found shot to death Saturday night in a snowbank on a south Minneapolis street.

Police officers discovered Fairbanks' body after responding to a report of shots fired shortly after 10 p.m. in the 2700 block of Longfellow Avenue S., just north of E. 28th Street.

A statement from the Hennepin County medical examiner on Sunday evening release noted that Fairbanks died as result of a gunshot to the head.

Later Saturday night, at 11:40 p.m., a man was shot in north Minneapolis and died Sunday morning, authorities said. The two deaths are "not even remotely connected" according police spokesman John Elder. "There is nothing that ties them together."

Police officers were called to the 1800 block of Hillside Avenue on Saturday and discovered a wounded man in the entry to a home, said Elder.

There have been no arrests in either case.

A third death, which occurred Saturday, is not considered a homicide, but still under investigation.

Officers were sent to the Como neighborhood about 12:45 a.m. after a call for help from a neighbor. They found one man dead next to a knife at a duplex in the 1100 block of 13th Avenue SE.

A 64 year-old man who lives 1.5 miles east of the scene in Lauderdale was immediately arrested at the duplex.

The suspect was released from jail shortly after 4 p.m. that same day without being charged, Elder said Sunday.