A shooting at a Mississippi River park near downtown Minneapolis wounded eight people, some critically, officials said Tuesday.
The shooting broke out around 11:30 p.m. Monday at Boom Island Park, just south of the Plymouth Avenue Bridge, Parks and Recreation Board spokeswoman Robin Smutters said.
No arrests have been announced.
“There was no official 4th of July event or fireworks display in the park or on the river,” Smothers said in an email, “but park visitors gathered on their own at Boom Island and other parks to celebrate the holiday.”
Smutters said “eight victims were hospitalized, [with] several in critical condition.” She had no information on the identities of the victims or exactly how many were among those with critical wounds.
A park police incident report listed four people with “serious injuries,” three of them 18 years old and the other 22 years old.
HCMC spokeswoman Christine Hill confirmed early Tuesday afternoon that the downtown hospital had admitted eight people from the incident on Boom Island. Hill declined to disclose any of their terms.
“After the shots were fired, the large group that had gathered in the park dispersed, many of them leaving before the police arrived,” Dawn Somers, another park board spokeswoman, said late Tuesday morning. “The majority of the shooting victims later arrived on their own at local hospitals where police were notified by the hospitals.”
Neither Park Board spokeswoman had information about the circumstances surrounding the shooting. They said anyone with information about the shooting should call park police at 612-230-6550.
City Councilman Elliot Payne, whose district in northeast Minneapolis is near Boom Island Park, called the shooting indicative of the availability of guns in Minneapolis and other cities.
“If they weren’t so widespread, maybe these events would have played out differently,” Pabey said.
Payne said he and other council members have discussed what they can do to reduce the number of guns in the community.
“We should all be disturbed by this type of violence,” he said. “It’s not acceptable and we have to deal with it.”
Star Tribune staff writer Andy Mannix contributed to this report.
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