A drive-by shooting left one man dead inside a vehicle late Thursday afternoon in north Minneapolis, where bystanders ran outside to try and revive the victim before paramedics arrived.
Fourth Precinct officers responded to the 3900 block of Sheridan Avenue N., one block north of Dowling Avenue, around 4:30 p.m. and found the young man lying on the ground, critically injured from multiple gunshot wounds. He died at the scene.
Nearby residents told the Star Tribune they heard a flurry of shots, a pause and then more gunfire before an SUV sped south down the block. When the bullets rang out, a young woman in a house across the street yelled "Get down!" to her spouse and jumped to the floor.
Moments later, they rushed outside to find a black Nissan Altima riddled with bullet holes and the driver slumped inside, a gun with an extended magazine in his lap. Smoke was still billowing out the window.
"By the time I got to the car, the person was already doing a death rattle," said the woman, a former certified nursing assistant with medical training, who declined to give her name.
With the help of a neighbor, they pulled the victim onto the ground and began doing CPR. He'd been struck numerous times and was no longer conscious. The couple rendered aid until first responders took over.
Bullet casings littered the street, so many that it was like stepping on a "spilled bag of popcorn," said the witness' mother. A cluster of at least a dozen bullet holes was visible in the driver's side window and door panel as forensic investigators cataloged evidence.
As word of the shooting spread, distraught family members arrived on the scene. Several screamed and sprinted past the yellow crime scene tape in a desperate attempt to reach the victim, before being intercepted by police officers.
"I just want to see him," one woman wailed in the street as darkness fell. "Why is he still here?" Another retched in the grass nearby.
Cmdr. Richard Zimmerman, the department's Major Crimes Community Response coordinator, approached the family with a box of tissues as the victim's mother begged to see her son. He promised that she could once the scene had been processed and the medical examiner had arrived.
The homeowners who attempted to revive the man joined a growing crowd of onlookers down the block and cried alongside his family. "We ran out there as fast as we could," the witness assured the victim's grandmother.
"Thank you for trying to help," she said, embracing the woman in a hug. "We truly appreciate it."
