The Associated Press
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) -- Dozens of people shouted at police, smashed windows and assaulted members of the media after a 10-year-old boy was injured by a bullet that ricocheted from a police officer’s gun.
The officer was shooting at a pit bull dog that had been turned loose on police who were trying to serve a search warrant on a house suspected of narcotics activity. But the bullet hit concrete and ricocheted into the arm of the boy who wasn’t in the line of fire, a police spokeswoman said.
The boy was treated and released from a hospital, spokeswoman Cyndi Barrington said.
The incident happened at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, but tensions grew later as TV news crews arrived to cover the event. About 75 to 100 people gathered in the north Minneapolis neighborhood and shouted at police and journalists.
Crowds surrounded a city bus and several media vehicles, smashing their windows. A KMSP-TV car was set on fire.
Two reporters for the Star Tribune of Minneapolis were beaten and suffered minor injuries, including one reporter who was pulled out of a station wagon. The other reporter, David Chanen, said he was thrown to the ground by a group of people shortly after he arrived at the scene.
“They started kicking me and laughing and they were punching me in the head,” said Chanen, who may have suffered a broken nose. “I was just screaming for them to stop. I just curled up in a ball.”
Chanen said the attack stopped after someone hollered that he was a reporter. “One of the guys who was beating me up picked me up. He said, ‘You better just get in your car and get out of here.”’
A photographer for the St. Paul Pioneer Press was hit in the head with a rock as a group of people surrounded his car. He received stitches at a nearby hospital, an editor for the Pioneer Press said.
Three people in the city bus suffered minor cuts from broken glass and a WCCO-TV reporter also was cut when the windows were smashed in her vehicle.
By midnight, police said the neighborhood appeared to have quieted. Officers in riot gear monitored the area throughout the night, and a State Patrol helicopter used infrared equipment to look for lingering groups of people.
Tensions in the neighborhood have been running high following an incident Aug. 13 in which police shot and wounded a 19-year-old black man who allegedly pointed a gun at an officer. In the aftermath of that situation, a white police officer was alleged to have said, “You all got one of ours. Now we got one of yours,” referring to a previous shooting.
The alleged statement, currently under investigation by police internal affairs, referred to a south Minneapolis shooting Aug. 1 that left a black woman and a white police officer dead.
“There have been two incidents that have probably left everyone’s emotions in the Twin Cities pretty raw,” Barrington said.
The only arrests Thursday night were of three people in connection with the search warrant on the house. They faced weapons and drug charges, Barrington said.
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak canceled appointments Friday to be in the community.