Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced Monday that her office is bringing additional murder charges against Joshua Anthony Jones after he allegedly killed two men and shot two others near a homeless encampment in Minneapolis two weeks ago.
Jones, 36, of Bemidji, now stands charged with two counts of second-degree murder, three counts of attempted second-degree murder and three counts of illegal firearms possession from the roving attacks that occurred over nearly 15 hours on Sept. 18.
While the shootings were in proximity to a homeless encampment in the Phillips neighborhood of south Minneapolis, Moriarty said it does not appear that the victims were living at the encampment or that Jones was trying to kill people living at the encampment.
“He did actually appear to have known the people that he targeted,” Moriarty said at a news conference. She added that a specific motive for the killings remains under investigation.
The two men killed were Roland Scott Littleowl, 20, and Robert Milton Brown, 39, of Minneapolis.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office provided a timeline of the allegations against Jones:
At 4:39 a.m., Jones walked into an alley on the 2500 block of 17th Avenue S. and shot Littleowl and another man in the head and shot at a third person but missed. Littleowl died at the scene, the other shooting victim survived. At 4:21 p.m. Jones is seen on surveillance video walking up to Brown on the 2500 block of Bloomington Avenue S. and shooting him in the head. Brown also died at the scene. At 7:19 p.m., Jones approached a fifth victim near the intersection of 24th Street and 18th Avenue S. and shot at him multiple times, hitting him in the shoulder.
A short time later, Jones was arrested.