A 17-year-old boy is expected to be charged as an adult this week with firing the drive-by shot that left a 12-year-old south Minneapolis girl paralyzed last fall.
Hennepin County District Judge John McShane on Wednesday certified Marlon Alejandro Lozano-Montano to stand trial as an adult. Prosecutors are expected to file adult charges against him Thursday or Friday.
He was charged as a juvenile in January with two counts of first-degree assault, including one for the benefit of a gang, and two counts of drive-by shooting, one for the benefit of a gang.
Guadalupe Galeno-Hernandez, now 13, was shot in the neck on Nov. 12. Juvenile charges say Lozano-Montano, who was 16 at the time of the shooting, is a member of the Surenõs 13 street gang. An alleged witness told police he was in the back seat of a car that day as it drove on Chicago Avenue S. Lozano-Montano rose through the sunroof of the car as it neared 34th Street and fired into a group of people wearing baggy clothes that suggested they might be in a gang, the witness alleged.
Police have said they don't believe any of the people with Galeno-Hernandez were gang members.
The alleged driver, Casey Michelle Walters, was charged in January with two felonies.
Lozano-Montano already was certified as an adult in connection with another allegedly gang-related crime the same week. Three days after the shooting, according to a juvenile court petition, he and an accomplice beat a teenage boy with a crowbar.
Lozano-Montano was jailed last month and charged with two felony counts of second-degree assault.
