The question of motive continues to hang over the slayings of two men on Minneapolis' North Side earlier this month, but police say they are examining several possibilities.
Neither the shooting death of Kyle Culberson on Sunday nor the killing of Gregory Turner in a home invasion robbery the day after have so far yielded an arrest, but police spokesman John Elder said that detectives are confident they are making progress in both cases.
Elder said that he couldn't discuss either case in detail because of the sensitivity of the ongoing investigations.
Turner, 52, was killed when a shotgun-wielding intruder broke into a duplex on N. 17th Avenue, between Irving and Girard avenues, on Monday afternoon. The suspect apparently pistol-whipped a resident of the other unit in the duplex before entering the side where Turner was staying and killing him with a shot to the chest, officials say. A preliminary investigation suggests that the gunman specifically targeted that address in search of drugs, although it's unclear whether Turner was the specific target.
Elder wouldn't comment on whether the slaying was in any way connected to another shooting the week before and a block away. In that incident, officers responding to a ShotSpotter activation just before 7 p.m. found a teenager suffering from a gunshot wound in the 1600 block of N. Irving Avenue, according to police and scanner reports.
"It is standard investigative practice to see if any crimes are linked or associated with other crimes of the same nature or in the same area geographically which includes local and regional as well as ties to other mediums," Elder said.
The teen's condition wasn't immediately known on Friday.
Homicide detectives are also investigating several possible motives in the death Sunday of Culberson, who was celebrating his 28th birthday when an altercation broke out at a house in the 5100 block of N. James Avenue. Culberson was shot in the chest, and two other men suffered nonlife threatening wounds to the leg, authorities say.
Court filings show that police had been watching the property since as long back as October of 2018, and had raided it twice in recent months as part of an drugs and weapons investigation.
The slayings were the city's 9th and 10th of 2019.
Libor Jany • 612-673-4064 Twitter: @StribJany
