Minneapolis neighborhood disrupted and united after Annunciation Church shooting

In this neighborhood, free-range parenting still exists. Kids bike down to Minnehaha Creek or walk a few short blocks to Starbucks. It’s a tightly knit and desirable area to live in south Minneapolis.

“It almost feels old-fashioned,” said Michael Burt, who lives with a blended family of five kids who all attend Annunciation Catholic School.

They were at Mass when gunfire rang out Wednesday, killing Fletcher Merkel, 8, and Harper Moyski, 10, and injuring 21 others. The shooter shattered lives and the strong sense of safety in the area, sandwiched between wealthy, predominately white neighborhoods of Windom and Tangletown — both with historically little violent crime.

“We created this safety net for our kids,” Burt said. “Now the whole world is watching, which is so uncomfortable.”

A barrage of national media outlets have descended on the neighborhood. TV crews camped outside homeowners’ front doors on West Diamond Lake Road as an endless stream of mourners across the street visited the memorial.

Neighbors say the outside world puts Minneapolis in a box, lumping this recent tragedy with the police killing of George Floyd and assuming the city at large is dangerous. But residents want the world to know they love their quiet, safe community that has been anything but that lately. And they want it back, or a semblance of it.

People paying their respects at the memorial site remain a constant, bringing flowers, teddy bears, balloons and cards.

“When people are in grief, when people are in loss, that’s what they need, is people to just be there. And you don’t have to have the right words to say, you just have to show up and do something,” Bliss said.

Donations continue pouring in. Some local restaurants are delivering food free of charge. For the impacted Annunciation families, neighbors offer to nanny and the dog grooming and boarding business down the street offered to care for pets.

The neighborhood grocery store, Kowalski’s Market, has a longstanding charitable giving tradition where customers place their receipt into one of a dozen boxes designated for a local organization or school. The box for Annunciation has been packed tight like a brick, brimming with receipts all weekend.

Next door, a row of small businesses display handmade signs in storefront windows saying “We love you Annunciation” and “Our hearts are with Annunciation.”

“You have to hold it together just driving around or walking around because you just want to give somebody, anybody, a hug,” said Darnell Edwards, a Canadian model who moved to the neighborhood 15 years ago from Panama with his wife and young son.

He walked to the Mexican food truck on Lyndale Avenue this weekend, greeting Roberto Olivera with a hug and talking about his son.

Olivera and his wife Guadalupe own the food truck that Annunciation lets them store in the back parking lot each night. Roberto has also managed Mac’s Fish & Chip across the street from the school for 13 years, where he saw neighborhood kids grow up.

The Oliveras live in Uptown, but call this neighborhood home.

Roberto was going to Annunciation on Wednesday morning to pick up their food truck when he saw the horror unfolding: a woman lying in the parking lot, people crying. He didn’t know what was happening, then learned children were shot where his daughter had her confirmation and graduated last year. Police barricaded the parking lot with yellow crime tape. The food truck had to stay, so he went to Mac’s to make food for first responders and the school.

“You can’t believe that happened when ... everything is relaxed, it’s good. Now it’s sad. Everything is sad,” Guadalupe said.

Those residents who tried to step away from it all and go for a walk saw every street pole and tree tied with blue and green ribbons in honor of Annunciation’s school colors, reminding them of the tragedy.

Kids still met up over the weekend at the coffee shop, but some couldn’t get out of the house. Others said they weren’t ready to return to Mass on Saturday or said they didn’t know if they could ever go back.

Brenton Parsons lives directly across the street from the church. His two sons, ages 6 and 16, were home alone. Parsons was teaching at a local Catholic high school when he heard the news, and his sons sheltered in the basement.

The family escaped to Chicago over the weekend. “I feel guilty we were able to get away,” Parsons said.

“We just needed some space,” he said. “I now understand for me that gun violence isn’t a thing other people experience, that it could be something that touches myself or my network of people.”

The bell tower of Annunciation was fixed for Annunciation’s 100th anniversary last year, and it now rings every hour. Some feel the sound is haunting, but for Burt, he said it reminds him that time marches on, that returning children to routine is the best way to move through chaos.

He said the recovery will be complicated and knows the neighborhood has changed forever, like George Floyd Square.

He said change has two paths: lightness or darkness. And Burt expects Annunciation to choose light.

“As long as that happens,” he said, “this place will still be as beautiful as it was on Tuesday.”