More than a dozen injured in Minneapolis shootings at homeless camp and
near transit station
[September 17, 2025]
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Eight people have been wounded,
including four with critical injuries, in a shooting at a homeless camp
on private property in Minneapolis, police said.
The shooting happened just hours after and blocks away from another
shooting that left five injured near a transit station as city officials
acknowledge a spate of recent violent crime in the area.
Those shootings come during a particularly violent summer for the
Minneapolis area. That includes the assassination of Minnesota House
Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home, as well as the
shooting of another state lawmaker and his wife the same day in June. A
mass shooting at a Minneapolis church in late August killed two children
and injured 21 others.
Police learned of the shooting at the homeless encampment around 10 p.m.
Monday when an off-duty officer working at a nearby retail store was
approached by people running from the camp and reporting gunfire,
Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O'Hara said in a news conference
following the city's latest mass shooting. The officer left the store
and heard gunfire coming from the encampment area.
Officers arriving at the scene found five people injured by gunfire,
including a woman and two men with life-threatening injuries. Another
man and a woman suffered what appeared to be non-life-threatening
wounds, with each having injuries to their legs. All five were rushed to
a hospital.
Police later learned that three other people, including one with
life-threatening injuries, walked or were taken to hospitals before
police arrived. O'Hara said no arrests had been made in either the
encampment shooting or the earlier shooting near the transit station.
“Unfortunately, here we are yet again in the aftermath of a mass
shooting,” O'Hara said. “This is not normal.”
The latest shooting happened at a homeless camp in a parking lot that
has been at the center of a legal conflict between the owner of the
property, Hamoudi Sabri, who opened it up to the homeless in July, and
city officials who want it shut down. Sabri has refused to shut down the
camp, and earlier this month, the city sued him to try to force the
camp's closure. Sabri is facing about $15,000 in citations and fines
related to the encampment.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, left, and Police Chief Brian O'Hara
stand during a news conference about a Department of Justice report
that found the Minneapolis Police Department has engaged in a
pattern or practice of discrimination, June 16, 2023, in
Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, file)
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said in a news conference in the hours
after the shooting that the city will be “clearing this encampment
immediately after the crime scene has been investigated.”
"This is way worse that just a nuisance. This is a danger to the
community," Frey said.
The city followed through Tuesday morning on Frey's promise to clear
the camp, drawing a crowd of dozens of camp residents and
protesters, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. City workers
were seen loading bicycles, tents and other belongings in the back
of garbage trucks while several people argued with police at the
scene, saying they were told they could collect their few belongings
before the encampment site was cleared.
Sabri responded with a statement criticizing city leaders for their
response to the recent violence, saying the city should provide
grief and trauma counselors and an emergency response that would
offer hotels and emergency shelter beds for the homeless and those
affected by the violence.
“Instead, the Mayor’s answer is the same tired move we’ve seen for
years: displacement,” Sabri said. “Bulldoze people’s tents, fence
off their space, and call it leadership. But it isn’t leadership.
It’s an illusion of control designed to make the problem less
visible, not less deadly.”
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