One injured in shooting at north Minneapolis block party

Crowds scattered as shots rang out at a north Minneapolis block party Saturday afternoon, injuring one person, according to a police spokesperson. 

The first-ever Summer Block Party and Music Festival, hosted by nonprofit Appetite for Change as a celebration of the organization's fifth birthday, was billed as an event to promote health, wealth and social change. Acts included DJ Tiiiiiiiiiip, King Louie, Carnage the Executioner and SKNY, among others.

That was all before shots were fired near the block party's concert stage at the corner of W. Broadway Street and Girard Avenue N., sending one woman to the hospital with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to her leg, officials said.

Witnesses recalled the tense first moments after the gunshot, which multiple people at the event maintain was an accident.

"I got off and saw a nice gathering of people ... I came out here and it was all love," Joel Vincent Gratton, who was at the block party all afternoon, said. "Next thing you know, there was a gunshot in the middle of the crowd, and the crowd was majority women and children. That's the sad part."

As crowds dispersed in the immediate aftermath of the incident, nobody stepped forward with information--leaving police with no suspect information, according to police spokesperson Corey Schmidt.

Authorities did locate a handgun nearby, though it is unclear whether it's the same one that was used in the incident.

For their part, event organizers and attendees all said the event--the first of what was intended to be an annual series--shouldn't be blemished by what they considered a small disturbance in an otherwise successful day.

"There were people in their 60s and 70s, all the way down to babies. It was beautiful thing," said Carnage the Executioner, one of the performers at the event. "There was a one minute incident that happened that ruined the whole thing, when it went on for four hours before anything like that happened."

Anyone with information on the incident is urged to call Minneapolis Police.