Two Twin Cities-area men were charged this week with attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault for allegedly shooting at law enforcement in September on Interstate 94 while fleeing a Brooklyn Center burglary.
Damon Davenport Jr., 18, of Coon Rapids and Rashad Odell Collins, 18, of Burnsville are accused of burglarizing an apartment and fleeing responding officers and a Hennepin County sheriff's deputy. The deputy said in charging documents filed Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court that the suspects shot at his squad car and a bullet struck his windshield. The deputy also found a bullet under the driver's seat, according to charges.
When Brooklyn Center police responded to the burglary in progress at 2:30 a.m. Sept. 15, a resident of the apartment told police that three people stole his cash and PlayStation console. The victim identified two of the men as Davenport and Collins, and police learned they were in a white Ford Fusion registered to Davenport.
The deputy spotted the vehicle and followed it at a high rate of speed through multiple stop signs, according to the charges. The pursuit continued from streets to an alley near Aldrich and 51st avenues N., where the deputy heard multiple gunshots.
The vehicle then got on the ramp to I-94, and while driving near Lowry Avenue, the deputy heard "another burst of gunfire." A bullet struck the middle of the windshield, "sending glass debris into the squad," charges say, before the pursuit ended so the deputy could check on the well-being of his K-9.
Crime scene investigators collected five spent casings at the site of the first shooting and 19 casings on I-94.
Investigators found surveillance video and obtained search warrants to monitor the men's cellphone locations. Davenport was arrested later that night. The following day, they found his abandoned vehicle with a casing that matched one fired at the squad car.
Collins was being surveilled at his girlfriend's apartment when on Sept. 22 he called his probation officer to say he would turn himself in. An acquaintance left the apartment, and it appeared Collins was traveling inside the vehicle based on his cellphone location. Instead, officers saw him afterward trying to leave with others, but he was arrested.
Police followed the acquaintance to St. Paul, where another vehicle rammed a squad car and the driver ran into a building on Prior Avenue. This led to police executing a search warrant at "two recording studios inside the Prior Avenue North address," charges say.
That's where police located five firearms, one of which was the same gun suspected to have been used when shots were fired at the deputy's squad car on I-94. During another search of Collins' girlfriend's apartment, police said they found the stolen PlayStation and several firearms.
Both Davenport and Collins remain held in the Hennepin County jail in lieu of $500,000 bail.
