Brooks: Two competing fundraisers offer snapshot of a fresh Minneapolis tragedy

A young mother stood outside her bullet-riddled home, alone and in tears, facing a crowd that had gathered to celebrate the life of the man who almost killed her and her children.

"He tried to kill me in front of my kids," Arabella Foss-Yarbrough called out to the mourners blocking the street in memory of Andrew Tekle Sundberg, her 20-year-old neighbor, who was shot and killed after a standoff with Minneapolis police on July 14. His mother's birthday.

Foss-Yarbrough called police for help that night, curled up in her kitchen, trying to protect her little boys — ages 2 and 4 — from the bullets Sundberg was firing into her apartment. Police bodycam footage captured officers pulling the family, including a toddler in a diaper, to safety.

"There's bullet holes in my kitchen," Foss-Yarbrough told a crowd that included Sundberg's heartbroken parents, siblings and friends. Cameras captured the July 16 confrontation.

"Not in you, though," someone in the crowd heckled her. "Shut up."

"I don't have a place to live," she said. "I can't sleep at night. This is not OK."

It was an awful scene. Even for Minneapolis, a city that has burned and marched and watched far too many of its neighbors take their last breaths on bystander video.

His family is still trying to understand why, after a six-hour standoff, his mental health crisis ended with a sniper's bullet.

Arabella Foss-Yarbrough and her children deserved to feel safe in their own home. Now her home is a crime scene and her little ones wake up screaming from nightmares.

At the protest, Foss-Yarbrough waved an arm at the signs and candles commemorating one violent death in a city that marked its 49th life lost to homicide last week.

"I have Black children. I am a woman of color," she said. "If I would have lost my life, would you guys do this for me?"

It was a family tragedy. It was a community trauma.

But in the week since that confrontation, two online fundraisers became online scorecards.

The first dollars flowed to the Sundberg family. The "Honoring Tekle" GoFundMe page recalled the life of a talented artist and a kind, funny son, brother, uncle and friend. Donations poured in from a community horrified that a second young Black man had been killed by Minneapolis police this year.

The family across the hall was less fortunate at first.

Her home was a crime scene, she'd just lost her job, and she and her children were staying with her older sister, who started a GoFundMe campaign on her behalf.

As she struggled to raise her first $1,000, her attacker's funeral fund was approaching $14,000.

"GoFundMe is allowing a small fortune to be collected for kin of the Minneapolis gunman fatally shot by cops after he fired at neighbors." So began the New York Post's account, contrasting the funeral fundraiser to an unsuccessful attempt to crowdfund donations for a New York bodega clerk who stabbed an attacker to death in his shop.

Donations started pouring in for Foss-Yarbrough. Donations came from other survivors of gun violence, from out of state. By Friday, the campaign had raised more than $70,000 for mother and children. In the comment section, kind words and well wishes mixed with comments sniping at the Black Lives Matter movement.

Critics also targeted the Sundberg family, pressuring GoFundMe to remove the fundraiser from its site. The fundraiser for his funeral expenses met its $20,000 goal and has stopped accepting donations.

GoFundMe's press office confirmed that the fundraiser was closed by its organizer, not the company. Neither of the campaign organizers responded to interview requests.

The donations to Foss-Yarbrough will "re-write the course of two beautiful childrens lives," her sister, Ashley Foss, wrote in a recent GoFundMe update.