Three people were injured in separate shootings on Minneapolis' North Side that occurred within minutes of one another on Wednesday afternoon, police said.
MPD spokesman John Elder said that two of the victims sustained noncritical injuries, but said he didn't immediately know the condition of the third victim.
The shootings happened in immediate succession, with the first incident happening about 4:39 p.m., according to police scanner audio. About an hour after the gunfire subsided, police were still trying to sort out where each event occurred and what led up to them.
Minneapolis, like other large U.S. cities, has seen a surge in bloodshed since the unrest after the May 25 killing of George Floyd. Police crime statistics show that at least 385 people have been struck by gunfire in 2020, the most in at least 15 years.
The next highest tally was the 375 shot in 2005 — the last year for which reliable data are available — when the city had 50,000 fewer residents. Experts have attributed to increase to a variety of factors ranging from warming temperatures and unrest over police violence to the economic and psychological strain of the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, they point out that overall crime remains at generational lows across the country.
