After working a late shift at a downtown Minneapolis restaurant last month, Joshua Kirk had some time to kill before heading to the airport to pick up a friend. The night was warm, so he decided to walk to Uptown for a nightcap.
By 11 p.m., he had made it as far as the corner of Groveland and S. Pillsbury avenues, a mostly residential area he had passed through many times before. As he walked, a man in a hoodie crept up behind him. Before Kirk realized what was happening, the man wrapped his arms around his neck.
"It was just a really dark spot on the block and he came up behind me and started choking me — I didn't hear a thing coming," Kirk, 37, said of the Aug. 11 incident. As he was being pulled to the ground, Kirk says he blacked out twice. As he came to, Kirk said, the robber was rifling through his pant pockets, one hand still around his throat.
The man, who Kirk described as dark-complected with an average build and a beard, didn't let go until a passerby intervened. The robber didn't get away with much — a $20 bill Kirk had on him at the time but the experience left him shaken, he said. Kirk sought medical attention the following day, but waited nearly a week before contacting police because things got busy at work, he said.
As it turns out, he may not have been the robber's first victim.
Police said they are investigating at least 11 other incidents with similar circumstances in downtown and south Minneapolis over the past two months. In each case, the victims were choked and then robbed. The first such stickup happened July 13 in the 440 block of Ridgewood Avenue, according to police.
A department spokesman said last week that detectives don't yet know whether the robberies are the work of a single suspect.
"MPD is investigating several robberies in the 1st and 5th (precincts) where victims have been strangled," Officer Corey Schmidt, a police spokesman, said. "Robbery Investigators are hoping to piece together suspect description by doing some follow up with each victim."
