‘Hellish’ bar shooting
1 dead, 14 hurt in Minn.
A shootout at a crowded Minnesota bar early Sunday left one woman dead and 14 people injured in what police called a “hellish situation.”
Officers found “bullet holes all over” Seventh Street Truck Park bar in St. Paul, where shots rang out around 12:15 a.m., police spokesman Steve Linders told the Pioneer Press.
Gunshot victims were found inside the bar, on the sidewalk and in the street, according to the outlet.
A woman in her 20s, who hasn’t been publicly identified, was pronounced dead at the scene.
“I think about the young woman who died,” Linders said. “One minute she’s having a good time, the next minute she’s lying in her friends’ arms who are trying to save her life and she didn’t make it. I can’t think of anything worse.”
St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell tweeted that the victim’s family is “absolutely devastated.”
“My heart breaks for the woman who was killed, her loved ones and everyone else who was in that bar this morning,” he said. “In an instant, they found themselves caught in a hellish situation. I want them to know that we have the best investigators in the country, and we won’t stop until we find the people responsible for this madness.”
Three men, ages 33, 32 and 29, were arrested but remain in the hospital with injuries, CBS Minnesota reported.
Police said the initial investigation showed that several people opened fire.
Fourteen injured people, who were rushed by medics to local hospitals, are expected to survive, according to the St. Paul police department. It was unclear whether the 14 included the three men who were busted.
Linders said investigators would reconstruct the shooting and then “deconstruct everything to figure out what happened.”
Asked whether the deadly gunplay was random, he replied, “Random in the sense that innocent victims were struck, yes. Random in the sense that . . . the people shooting at each other didn’t know each other, probably not.”
The woman was the 32nd homicide victim in the city this year.
The Seventh Street Truck bar is in an entertainment district just south of the Xcel Energy Center, where the NHL’s Minnesota Wild play.