An alleged teenage gang founder who was tried as an adult because of his violent past has pleaded guilty to a string of drive-by shootings in Minneapolis last year.
Patrick Carl Timberlake, 17, of Minneapolis, pleaded guilty to two counts of felony drive-by shooting for the incidents. He faces up to nine years in prison when he is sentenced April 29.
Timberlake was linked to a series of shootings on March 5, 2012, including one in which a woman reported being shot in the foot at 21st and Lyndale Avenues N. by someone in a black Ford Crown Victoria.
Later, a passenger in the same car fired several times into a vehicle with a driver and two passengers on W. Broadway near Penn Avenue N., causing a bullet to lodge in the driver's neck. In a third report, a woman and two men who said they were in their vehicle near Dupont and 25th Avenues N. said a gunman in the same vehicle fired three shots into the driver's side door.
Police tracked the Crown Victoria to Dexter Lee, who lived at 2954 Dupont Av. N. The home is near the scene where Juwon "Skitz" Osborne was shot and killed in 2011. Timberlake, Lee and other friends blamed rival gang members for the slaying and formed the "Skitz Squad" to retaliate, according to charges.
Some victims in the string of shootings were connected to rival gangs, although others were unrelated to the feud.
The Skitz Squad is also linked to a feud that allegedly led to last summer's death of 5-year-old Nizzel George.
In December, the Minnesota Court of Appeals reversed an attempt to try Timberlake as a juvenile for the March shootings. The ruling cited the "extreme gravity" of the offense and Timberlake's lack of response to earlier juvenile justice programming from a previous gun-related conviction.
