Woman stabbed, robbed at Ramp B in downtown Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (KMSP) - A woman attacked in a downtown parking garage over the weekend is recovering after a brazen robbery that left her with a stab wound to the chest.

The victim’s status was upgraded to serious Sunday after she and a group of friends were robbed and assaulted as they walked back to their car around 1:00 a.m. Saturday.

According to police, the armed suspect approached the women armed with a knife and stole a purse. Friends say the victim tried to “intervene” when she got stabbed in the chest.

Ken Sherman, of commercial development company the Sherman Group, is a restaurant and nightclub owner downtown. He has been a vocal critic of Mayor Betsy Hodges and the city’s handling of crime downtown.

The city says it has increased patrols downtown on nights and weekends in an effort to curb crime--an effort Sherman, however, says isn’t working.

“I’ve been working down in this area at night for the last three years, I haven’t seen any change at all,” Sherman said. “There’s not an emphasis on safety for everyone that not only comes downtown but uptown.”

Sherman believes the incident over the weekend may have been avoided if the city’s lurking law was still in place.

“What they did at that time was run sweeps in parking ramps looking for people who shouldn’t be there—and by that, they look for groups of people who didn’t look like they were going to and from their car,” Sherman said. “What would often happen when they did that is they would find people with open warrants and more importantly, they would find people with weapons.”

The lurking law was repealed by a vote of the Minneapolis City Council in June 2015. Critics of the law said it targeted people of color and contributed to racial inequity in the criminal justice system.

Sherman says he supports the officers. He feels their hands are tied due to directions from “higher-ups.”

“They are constantly told to deescalate, deescalate, deescalate, and the result is what you see,” he said.

Police have yet to make an arrest in the Saturday morning incident.