1 Dead, 1 Hurt In South St. Paul Shooting; Suspect In Custody
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- The South St. Paul Police Chief is crediting good police work for the capture of a man they believe killed another man this morning, and seriously wounded another.
It happened in South St. Paul on 17th Avenue. It was the the city's second homicide of the year.
"It's been a weird morning, I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it, having seen what I seen, and it's no good," Brian Redner said.
South St. Paul is where Redner grew up. A hockey kid in the '80s, he recently moved to 17th Avenue near where he was raised, a place that's now a crime scene.
Redner says he was enjoying his quiet neighborhood when at about 4 a.m. he thought he heard what he thought was a gunshot a few feet from his home.
"I kinda dismissed it as a 'not around here' thing, and then I heard three of four more shots. And those were closer, and I could tell those were closer," he said.
Redner says he looked out the window and saw the suspected shooter run quickly down the street.
"That's when I heard someone screaming for help up there, so I grabbed my phone, went over there, called 911, just trying to talk to the guy to tell him help is on the way," he said.
South St. Paul Police showed up and found another shooting victim on a nearby sidewalk.
"It's a very chaotic scene. You've got two victims there and you are also trying to locate a suspect, so it's a lot to handle for a small department like ours," Chief William Messerich said.
But with help from other agencies, they handled it, catching the suspect three hours later at a hotel on the other side of town.
Messerich says one victim died at the scene, and the other is stable. He says the suspect and victims knew each other, so it wasn't random. But it was tragic.
Redner says he is still processing the what he witnessed.
"Somebody loves him. Somebody's gonna be fatherless, sonless, something. I don't know, it just doesn't make any sense," he said.
The shooting is under investigation by the South St. Paul Police Department and the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. Anyone with information on the shooting is asked to call the police department at 651-554-3300.