By the light of day Saturday, police continued combing for clues in three separate homicide investigations stemming from a rash of weekend gunfire that marked one of the deadliest days of the year in Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Two men were killed and three were wounded in separate shootings in Minneapolis late Friday. Those shootings came just hours after a man was found dead in the street in St. Paul's Summit-University neighborhood.
Authorities have not released the victims' names, and no arrests had been reported by Saturday night.
Minneapolis officers were called to the 2000 block of Washington Avenue N. just before midnight Friday on a report of shots fired. They found a man dead on the sidewalk outside Cliff-n-Norm's Bar and another man in the area with a gunshot wound. He was taken to North Memorial Health Hospital in Robbinsdale.
Later, police were notified that another man and a woman with gunshot wounds had sought treatment at area hospitals. The man went to North Memorial, while the woman went to the University of Minnesota Medical Center in Minneapolis. Both are expected to survive.
According to emergency dispatch audio, an off-duty officer reported hearing at least 20 shots before cars peeled away from the scene.
On Saturday, red and black balloons hung above a makeshift memorial in the alley behind the bar. A line of votive candles flickered on the curb.
Earlier Friday evening, a man was killed behind a restaurant in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. Officers responded to the 1800 block of Riverside Avenue at 7:20 p.m., where they found a man dead inside a car in the parking lot near the Hard Times Cafe.
