Brawl, bar shooting highlight unusually violent night in Minneapolis

Caution tape surrounded the 3000 block of 5th Avenue near Lake Street early Sunday morning after what police say is a brawl unlike any other they’ve been called to before.

“This was truly an anomaly,” said John Elder, the public information officer for the Minneapolis Police Department. “You know you can have a shooting and a stabbing but when you have someone intentionally hit by a car, you have someone pistol whipped on top of those two. It’s really uncommon.”

According to Minneapolis Police, it all started around bar close time and quickly escalated from there.

The brawl started with a fight, then escalated to a pistol whipping, a stabbing and someone intentionally hitting another with a car before another shooting.

Police say the man who was shot is the only one of the group in critical condition.

“Sometimes when things get out of hand, they get out of hand badly, and these were two incidents that occurred during bar close that went very, very badly for those involved,” said Elder.

Just ten minutes later, roughly 15 minutes away, the second of the Sunday morning shootings occurred outside Moose Bar and Grill.

Police say only the shooter and the man he shot were involved in this incident.

A K9 team tried to catch up with the shooter, but the search had to be called off. They say there were too many other people out and about at the time.

“But the Luke Bryan concert and the X-Games. Those things, of course, just added tens of thousands of people from each event into the downtown area. So this is more than usual,” Elder added.

It was more than usual and police say much more crime than usual for an early Sunday morning around Minneapolis.