One day before Annunciation, there was another Minneapolis mass shooting

Less than 24 hours before two children were slain and 21 others injured at Annunciation Catholic Church, another mass shooting shook the community surrounding Cristo Rey Jesuit High School in south Minneapolis.

The aftermath of the Aug. 26 daylight barrage of gunfire was gruesome. Bystander videos and photos showed gaping wounds left by a gunman with a rifle. Gregory Sweeten, 35, was killed and six other adults were seriously injured. The shooter remains at large, although two alleged accomplices were arrested and charged.

The fallout from the shooting near Lake Street and Interstate 35W was eclipsed by what happened less than 24 hours later and just a few miles south at Annunciation. But for students at Cristo Rey, it raised similar fears.

Sam Garcia, a sophomore at Cristo Rey, said he was inside the school when he heard five booming sounds from the rifle that was fired on Clinton Avenue, which runs alongside the school. While he said he feels secure at Cristo Rey, he found it worrying that the shooting happened just outside.

“It was pretty concerning, because you don’t really feel that safe anymore at schools,” Garcia said.

Tiffany Lynn Marie Martindale, 30, and Ryan Timothy Quinn, 33, are charged with aiding an offender to avoid arrest. They are accused of driving the shooter to the scene before he got out and fired numerous shots into a small crowd on the sidewalk and got back in the car. The suspect was wearing a mask and goes by “Bino,” according to criminal complaints.

The shooting unfolded about 1:30 p.m. in the 2900 block of Clinton Avenue S., across the street from the building that houses the private Catholic high school and the nonprofit Urban Ventures. At least one of the victims in the group was targeted, Police Chief Brian O’Hara said.

As Cardona spoke, O’Hara was giving a news conference about a half-mile east after a man was shot and killed on Tuesday inside the Chicago and Lake transit station bringing that week’s Minneapolis homicide total to six. He described the past week as “absolutely terrible.”

“We hear and we share the community’s frustration and grief, and we are committed to doing everything we possibly can to make Minneapolis safer for everyone,” the chief said at the news conference.

“I think it is kind of unsafe,” Cardona said. “I think we should do something to protect our street.”

Cardona said she wishes there were more gun laws in the state and across the United States to restrict access to weapons such as the rifle the gunman used on Clinton Avenue, which O’Hara said was “high-velocity” and a “weapon of war.”

Several students said school staff blocked off the rooms with windows looking out at the shooting scene to ensure students couldn’t see the aftermath.

The shooting was a short walk from the Midtown Greenway bike path to the north and Lake Street to the south, which is mostly commercial spaces.

Close to the school, William Nutt was on a work break in the AutoZone parking lot, just down the road from the shooting. Nutt said he moved to Minneapolis a little over a year ago, and that in his first week there were several people shot and over a hundred shots fired outside his home near the intersection of W. 28th Street and Pleasant Avenue.

Nutt was in the store last week when a man banged on the glass for help, bleeding from a gunshot wound to the jaw. Nutt said he doesn’t feel safe in the city as a single father of a 5-year-old.

“It’s kind of terrifying, and I’m angry,” Nutt said. “I’ve been an angry person ever since.”

Nutt and other employees held paper towels to the man’s jaw until paramedics arrived. He said it took several attempts to reach 911 dispatchers to flag that a victim was in the store.

Jose Torres, a 61-year-old who lives along the sidewalk where the shooting took place, said shootings and other crimes are nothing new for the neighborhood. He said he was away from his house when the shooting took place.

“It is definitely not a quiet or safe place,” he said.

If students were outside when the shooting happened, he said, it could have been “catastrophic.”