Originally posted 3:51 p.m. February 23rd, 2022
Updated 1:04 p.m. February 24th, 2022
(KNSI) — Charges have now been filed against the suspect accused of shooting nine-year-old Trinity Ottoson-Smith as she played in a friend’s backyard last May.
Nineteen-year-old Dpree Shareef Robinson was arrested Wednesday in Minneapolis and is now formally charged with second-degree murder.
Investigators say Ottoson-Smith was jumping on a trampoline at a home on the 2200 block of Ilion Avenue North the evening of May 15th, 2021, when she was caught in the crossfire of a drive-by shooting. According to the criminal complaint, it says Ottoson-Smith was “directly between the shooter and the intended targets, who appeared to be three males on the side porch of the residence.”
She was rushed to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, where she died 12 days later.
Police were looking for a red Ford Fusion seen in the area at the shooting time. Robinson allegedly bought the Fusion just days before that and told the person who sold it never to tell anyone he had it. He also allegedly used his phone right after the shooting to look up how to change the car’s paint color. That car has never been found.
The intended target in the Ottoson-Smith case was a rival gang member who is Robinson’s ex-girlfriend’s brother.
Search warrants filed in June show an alleged conversation between Robinson and a woman who referred to Robinson as a child killer and told him, “I hope you die for killin that lil girl.” A witness also reportedly told police Robinson admitted to being at the scene but didn’t know if bullets from his gun or another gang member hit Ottoson-Smith.
Her hospital room was reportedly next to that of Ladavionne Garrett Junior, who had also been shot in north Minneapolis while in the backseat of his parents’ SUV on April 30th. Garrett spent six months in the hospital before being discharged in November. Another child, six-year-old Aniya Allen, was shot May 17th, 2021, while riding with her parents in the 3500 block of Penn Avenue North. She died two days later at Hennepin County Medical Center.
No suspects have been arrested in those shootings.
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KNSI News reporter Jeff McMahon contributed to this report.
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