Punch during basketball game preceded Twin Cities man being shot in back and paralyzed, charge says

A rift during a basketball game apparently preceded the shooting of an aspiring college football player as he stood on a Brooklyn Park sidewalk, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday.

Trokon Kaigboyah, of Brooklyn Park, was charged in Hennepin County District Court with aiding one or more suspects in connection with the shooting on May 29 shortly after 12:30 a.m. outside the victim Michael Blidi Jr.’s home in the 6000 block of Garwood Road. Blidi was shot in the back.

Kaigboyah, 36, remains jailed ahead of a court appearance Friday afternoon. Court records do not list an attorney for him.

As of midafternoon Friday, no other suspects have been arrested or charged stemming from the shooting.

Blidi, 19, was bound this coming football season for Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge.

According to the criminal complaint:

Blidi told police he parked his car outside his house when two masked men in a car drove by. One of the men fired a shot from inside the vehicle and wounded Blidi before the pair drove off.

Police watched surveillance video outside Blidi’s home that captured the suspects’ car leaving the scene of the shooting and parking outside Kaigboyah’s apartment building. Three males then enter the building; Kaigboyah soon exited and moved the car to a visitor’s parking spot.

A police search of the car turned up marijuana and a discharged .40-caliber cartridge casing. Seized from Kaigboyah’s apartment by police were two handguns, a loaded Glock 23 and a .40-caliber firearm with an extended magazine. Also found were various types of ammunition and several .45-caliber live rounds in a toilet bowl.

Following his arrest, Kaigboyah told police that three males came to his apartment after the shooting. He admitted moving their car and allowing them to change clothes at his residence.

He said the men told him that something had gone down. They then gave him a Glock firearm in a paper bag. All three men stayed in the apartment until about 5 a.m.

“His dream was terminated by a gunshot wound to his spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed from the knee down,” his father, Michael Blidi Sr., wrote on an online fundraising page started to help with expenses related to the shooting. “Doctors said he’s not going to walk again.”