Minneapolis Police Chief Says “Enough is Enough” After Three Year Old Boy Was Shot Friday Night

(KNSI) – Minneapolis Police Chief Medaria Arradondo says he is concerned about what he called an “epidemic” of gun violence around the city.

Over the weekend, a three-year-old boy was seriously injured after being shot in the femoral artery. A police officer tied a tourniquet around the child’s leg. After learning an ambulance was still several minutes away, the officer drove him to the hospital in his police car, which, according to Police Spokesman John Elder, saved his life.

The boy was one of at least two people hurt in a hail of bullets that began flying around 9:45 p.m. Friday in the 33 hundred blocks of Emerson Avenue North. A man in his 30’s was also shot in that ordeal. Another person showed up at Hennepin County Medical Center with a gunshot wound about 10:20 p.m.

No arrests have been made in this shooting.

“Seeing this many kids being shot is heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking,” Elder added.

Three children were shot between April 30th and mid-may. Two of those children, nine-year-old Trinity Ottoson Smith and six-year-old Aniya Allen, died. Ten-year-old Ladavionne Garret Junior of St. Cloud still has a long road to recovery ahead of him. A nine-month-old baby’s head was grazed by a bullet earlier this month. No one has been arrested for those shootings, either.

In a statement, Chief Arradondo said that the violence “has to stop. Enough is enough.” He added that the biggest threat to Minneapolis’s Black community is not the police, “We have an epidemic right now of unequivocal gun violence, particularly in our African American communities, and that must stop.”

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