Uptown Red Alert: Violence Erupts Anew In Entertainment District

A 26 year old man was shot in the head Saturday night by what appears to be two armed robbers. The criminals remain on the loose at this time.

The randomness and time of this crime is particularly disturbing. It happened close to ground zero of the Minneapolis Uptown entertainment district - Lake & Hennepin, and at a prime-time hour: 9:55 pm.

You won't get suspect descriptions from the Red Star ["No detailed descriptions of the suspects or car were available."- per their web posting at the time of this blog entry], or most of the MSM. Only Fox9 News has so far had the common sense to publish and broadcast suspect descriptions. Because of immediate public safety concerns, here is the initial information as relayed by Fox 9 News, however vague at this time:

Police are looking for two young men, possibly black, ages 17 to 22. They were last seen fleeing in a white car.

KSTP News reports:

A Minneapolis hot spot has been the vicitim [sic] of several crimes, including an armed robbery that ended violently Saturday night. A 25-year-old man is very critical condition after he's shot by muggers who also took his mother's purse.

The man was shot in the head by the muggers as he walked back to his car with his mother after dinner in Uptown.

The Red Star reports, but omits suspect descriptions. Why? Do they want us to believe they don't have access to the same information KSTP News has? Here is part of the Red Star version, sans suspect information (By the way, you may recall a previous post where I show a police crime alert and the Red Star story side-by-side showing that the Red Star appeared to have scrubbed suspect information from a crime report):

A 25-year-old man is in critical condition after he was shot during a robbery Saturday in Minneapolis' Uptown area.

Police said the man, whose identity was not released, and his mother, sister and a friend were walking to their car when two men approached them about 9:55 p.m. in the 3100 block of Girard Avenue S. in the Carag neighborhood. The group had just come from a restaurant at Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue.

Police said the suspects demanded the mother's purse. She obliged and there was no struggle or resistance, but one suspect then shot the man, police said.

In the Fox 9 News television report, Minneapolis Police Deputy Chief Lubinski said that (paraphrasing) this type of crime is "very unusual for Uptown". That's interesting, because the very reason this blog began in April of 2005 was specifically in response to an wave of violent robberies in Uptown Minneapolis. The very first post is here, with many more that follow - for example this one from 11/21/05: "Uptown violence explodes (again)".

How could Deputy Chief Lubinski say this is unusual for Uptown?

Minneapolis experienced waves of violence in the spring of 2005, throughout the summer, into the fall, and throughout the winter. I predicted that if nothing was done (and no known long term solutions have been implemented to date) there would be hell to pay in the spring of 2006. Read this post, if no other, for the 2005 roundup: "2005: The Minneapolis Quagmire - year end roundup".

I was wrong about the violence escalating in the spring, however. It's already begun.